Texas Farmer Hopes for Rain, Counts on Crop Insurance
Rain in West Texas can be scarce. So scarce, in fact, that farmer Brett Schniers wrote in a recent op-ed for the San Angelo Standard-Times that “when you lay down at night, you pray for rain because you don’t know when you’ll see it again.” Despite the incredible promise of 2020, it has been a […]
Crop Insurance an Essential Part of Farmers’ Hurricane Preparedness Kits
June 1 marked the beginning of hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean and its already off to a roaring start. One month in and three named storms have already affected the United States – two of those storms formed before the season even officially began. Most recently, Tropical Storm Cristobal made landfall in Louisiana, and […]
Eastern North Carolina farmers on long road to recovery after Hurricane Florence
WALLACE, NC – Justine Price was looking forward to a great soybean crop this fall. His beans were coming in strong, covering the fields of his eastern North Carolina farm in a lush green. Mother Nature had other plans. As Hurricane Florence approached the North Carolina coast, he moved his equipment to higher ground and […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: John Michael Pillow, Yazoo City, Mississippi
John Michael Pillow is a fourth generation Mississippi farmer and spent the first part of his career managing his family’s farm. In 2011, Pillow decided to strike out on his own and become a full-time farmer. “Most of the 3,500 acres I planted that year were in corn, which is a crop whereby most of […]
While Many Parts of the Country are Waterlogged, California Remains Locked in Drought
A quick look at the U.S. Drought monitor says it all. For the vast majority of the country, the years-long drought has been all but eliminated. A year ago, 13 percent of the contiguous U.S. was locked in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the two most severe stages. All of this area was west of the […]
California Drought Worsens as Rainy Season Ends, Growers Fret
“California’s reservoirs obviously will not be significantly replenished by a melting snowpack this spring and summer,” concluded the year-end snow survey by the California Department of Water Resources. The mountain snowpack is critical to the state’s water needs and provides roughly one-third of the water for California’s farms and cities. “Today’s final snow survey of […]
Three Year Drought Continues to Stalk Farm Country; Maps Show Dramatic Progression
The area of the continental U.S. plagued by drought has more than doubled since February 2011, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Even more disturbingly, the portion of the country locked in a level of drought considered “severe, extreme, or exceptional” has increased by more than 400 percent over that same period of time, according […]
2012 Drought Extends Its Grip Into 2013
The 2012 growing season has ended for most of the nation’s farmers, but the drought that dogged many of them appears here to stay. According to the December 11, U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly 62 percent of the continental United States remains in some stage of drought. Forty-three percent of that area is considered to be […]
Hurricane Sandy Robs Some Delmarva Farmers of A Promising Harvest
Delmarva farmers weren’t directly in the eye of Hurricane Sandy when the storm slammed into the East Coast, but they were awful close. Most of the Delmarva Peninsula, comprised of Delaware and the Eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia, was just south of where the hurricane came ashore in Cape May, New Jersey. The peninsula […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Bob and Mike Buntin, Thompsonville, Illinois
The choices Illinois farmers faced in the past when drought struck the Midwest were unpleasant all around. They could borrow money from family, drain their hard-earned savings or go under. In the last decade, crop insurance has made it possible for brothers Robert (Bob) and Michael Buntin, owners of Buntin Bros., Inc. in Thompsonville, to […]
