Perverse USDA Incentives Setting Up Dust Bowl Conditions In Five Southern Plains States

[hatrack]

Over the past decade, farmers in the Great Southern Plains have suffered the worst drought conditions since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. They've battled heat, dust storms and in recent weeks, fires that devoured more than 900,000 acres and killed thousands of cattle. These extreme conditions are being fueled by climate change. But a new report from an environmental advocacy group says they're also being driven by federal crop insurance policy that encourages farmers to continue planting crops on compromised land, year after year.

"Dust bowl conditions are coming back. Drought is back. Dust storms are back. All the climate models show the weather getting worse," said Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which released the report Wednesday. "You'd think the imperative would be on adaptation, so we don't make the same mistakes we did back in the 1930s." But, Cox explained, a provision in the 2014 Farm Bill—the sprawling legislation that funds farming and nutrition programs—encourages continued degrading of the land, making conditions worse, especially in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas.

Federal crop insurance coverage is based on the average yields of a particular crop in a particular area, through a calculation known as the Actual Production History. Farmers pay for coverage and premiums based on this history and are guaranteed a payment level if their crops sell for less than the expected average. Under the 2014 law, farmers are allowed to throw out bad years in their calculations, which means they receive coverage based on good crop years only. That ignores the impacts of weather extremes aggravated by climate change.

Cox and other critics of the policy—known as the yield exclusion provision—say it artificially inflates the crop insurance payouts. Roughly 60 percent of federal crop insurance premiums are paid for by the government. It also rewards farmers for planting on weakened, dust-blown soil. In the 20 counties most affected by Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers can overlook eight years of bad production, and in two Colorado counties, as many as 16 years. "The counties that can ignore the most bad years are the counties that are right in the heart of the old Dust Bowl," Cox said. "It's like having a car insurance policy that ignores accidents or ignores poor driving if you're constantly getting tickets."

Ed. - Emphasis added.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21032017/agriculture-climate-change-dust-bowl-southern-plains-drought

[appal_jack]

1. Correcting this will require finesse.

There is no question that the perverse incentives posed by the yield exclusion provision of present Federal crop insurance coverage need to go. Yet, any correction also needs to recognize that farms in these counties are already on-edge. A lot of earlier farm support programs were eliminated, and crop insurance was promoted as a more market-friendly alternative. This experiment has failed. I believe that direct payments for sound conservation practices (which have existed for decades, but have been cut in recent years) need to be stepped-up, both for the sake of the ecosystem, and the human lives of farmers and their families who live there.

k&r,

-app