{"id":7027,"date":"2025-11-07T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/07\/safety-net-policies-dont-catch-every-missouri-farmer-2\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T08:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:00:03","slug":"safety-net-policies-dont-catch-every-missouri-farmer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/07\/safety-net-policies-dont-catch-every-missouri-farmer-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety net policies don\u2019t catch every Missouri farmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Valerie Schlapper, left, 13, helps her mom, Abbey Innes, right, on Saturday at their table at the Columbia Farmers Market. The business, With the Wild Farm, is owned and operated by Innes and her husband, Guy Schlapper (Lily Mantel\/Missouri News Network).<\/p>\n

A rainbow of crops fills farmer Abbey Innes\u2019 table at the Columbia Farmers Market: tomatoes, squash, garlic, kale and flower bouquets \u2014 all from her and her husband\u2019s 15-acre farm in Howard County.<\/p>\n

But for a few markets last year, the table was a bit emptier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe planted hundreds of pounds of seed potatoes and got 10 inches of rain within 10 days,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they drowned; they rotted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farming is risky business, and crop insurance helps keep farmers paid when something goes wrong. A few years ago, Innes tried to see if she could get her farm insured. But the agent told her she didn\u2019t have enough of any one particular crop to qualify for insurance.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because she purposefully farms \u201cwith the land,\u201d and to her that means farming a variety of crops. Research indicates diverse farms are better for the environment compared to single-crop farms. Diverse farms bolster soil health and require fewer chemical inputs.<\/p>\n

For her efforts, she had to forgo insurance and eat the entire cost of those rotted potatoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is nerve-racking,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just got to be ready to be flexible and have a backup plan for if something doesn\u2019t go right.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some farmers, crop insurance is the backup plan. It\u2019s subsidized by the federal government, and taxpayers foot most of the bill. Taxpayers will pay about $13 billion directly into the program each year over the next decade, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n

But not all farms enjoy equal protection.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnywhere between 90 and 100% of corn, soybean and wheat acreage in the United States is covered under some form of crop insurance policy,\u201d said Ben Brown, an University of Missouri Extension agricultural business and policy specialist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is, I would say, larger barriers to entry for fruit and vegetable producers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Garlic and other products sit on display on Saturday at the With the Wild Farm booth at the Columbia Farmers Market. Owner Abbey Innes grows and sells the crops with her husband, Gary Schlapper.<\/p>\n

\n

Most crop insurance policies protect against a drop in production or revenue by assessing a farm\u2019s baseline of one or both of those metrics. For row crop commodities, such as corn and soybeans, it\u2019s relatively straightforward since projected prices are standardized and many large farms only have one or a few crops to insure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

But it gets a lot more complicated to insure a diverse, 15-acre farm like the one Innes owns. Prices and yields are different for each crop and less standardized than for commodity crops.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cOne of the challenges of developing crop insurance markets for fruit and vegetables is there\u2019s a lot of different prices, and there\u2019s a lot of things that drive those price markets,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The\u00a02014 Farm Bill\u00a0<\/a>created Whole-Farm Revenue Protection insurance as an option for diversified farms. Instead of insuring the yield or revenue of particular crops, it insures the revenue of an entire farm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

But barriers to access and education have kept adoption low. Many farmers, including Innes, have never heard of the program. Even some insurance agents don\u2019t know about it, and if they do, many don\u2019t want to sell the product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cOne of the big challenges for this has been just the sheer amount of recordkeeping and paperwork that\u2019s required, not only of the producer but also of the crop insurance agent selling the product,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Brown said agents are less incentivized to sell whole-farm insurance because of the extra workload.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Plus, the plans are often smaller in scale, meaning less commission for the insurance agent \u2014 and that can mean less incentive to sell, according to the\u00a0National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cThe system itself is set up where these private insurers and companies, and agents themselves, are incentivized, in a way, to sell certain policies and not sell others,\u201d said Duncan Orlander, a policy specialist at the advocacy group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In 2022, larger farms received 80% of payments from federal crop insurance, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture research. That same year, a majority of farms producing row crops purchased insurance, but fewer than 9% of farms growing specialty crops, such as fruits and vegetables, did the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The difficulty for diverse farms to get crop insurance is one of the reasons Orlander and the coalition believe the program needs to be tweaked to better promote conservation efforts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cWhat we certainly don\u2019t want to do is take that safety net away from farmers,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s about how do we structure these policies in a way that allow for farmers themselves to have more agency in their decision-making while maintaining that safety net to encourage conservation practices.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For example, Orlander said insuring large-scale row crop farms based on their historical yield pushes farmers to produce more and more to keep that baseline high.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

That could disincentivize them from using conservation practices that could be good for the farm and the planet in the long run, but have short-term drags on yield.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a perpetuating process here of farmers who don\u2019t want to necessarily change because they don\u2019t want to lose the security of crop insurance,\u201d Orlander said. \u201cWhich is completely understandable, and I think it\u2019s about making these products more flexible for conservation work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Economist Cory Walters is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a farmer himself. He said overall, crop insurance is good for conservation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cIt gives you that (revenue) floor,\u201d Walters said. \u201cIt gives you that certainty to then take that next step and invest in whatever that new technology is and give it a try.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Walters did agree that crop insurance should be used to push conservation in a positive direction by offering incentives to farmers for implementing environmentally-friendly practices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cIf you could link your additional premium subsidy, or some incentive, to also do something else in the conservation world that that that seems like a great place to operate with trying to get farmers to to adopt different technologies,\u201d he said<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For example,\u00a0Iowa gives farmers<\/a>\u00a0a discount on their premiums if they use cover crops, a conservation method that involves covering soil with crops that won\u2019t be harvested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cI think crop insurance and conservation can go together very well with the right mindset,\u201d Walters said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Innes currently uses cover crops on her family\u2019s farm in Howard County. She said it\u2019s helped make their soil more resilient. When she set up her table at the Columbia Farmers Market on Saturday, she had multiple varieties of potatoes to sell and many customers bought them throughout the morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

But now she\u2019s worried about another problem \u2014 deer. Apparently, they\u2019re fans of potatoes too. And without crop insurance, she\u2019d again bear the cost herself if the wildlife harvests the potatoes before she does.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

This story was originally published by KBIA<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valerie Schlapper, left, 13, helps her mom, Abbey Innes, right, on Saturday at their table at the Columbia Farmers Market. The business, With the Wild Farm, is owned and operated by Innes and her husband, Guy Schlapper (Lily Mantel\/Missouri News Network). A rainbow of crops fills farmer Abbey Innes\u2019 table at the Columbia Farmers Market:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSafety net policies don\u2019t catch every Missouri farmer - WestplexNews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/07\/safety-net-policies-dont-catch-every-missouri-farmer-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Safety net policies don\u2019t catch every Missouri farmer - WestplexNews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Valerie Schlapper, left, 13, helps her mom, Abbey Innes, right, on Saturday at their table at the Columbia Farmers Market. 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