URBANA — The Brownfield Ag News Coffee Stops Tour landed in Pam’s Café Wednesday morning, where farmers shared their comments, questions, and concerns.
The morning featured a lively discussion among farmers, agriculture-focused representatives from iAB Financial Bank, and Brownfield Ag News Farm Director Meghan Grebner — who is the farm broadcaster for Indiana.
Much of the talk centered on the farm bill, which is currently stuck in Congress.
“I’m a farmer, as well as being in lending, so I see all facets,” said Penny Kinser, the crop insurance manager and vice president of agribusiness development at iAB. “We talk about the safety net of crop insurance a lot.”
She said she believes direct payments to farmers will become a thing of the past, but crop insurance will be maintained.
“People appreciate that farmers have skin in the game,” she said. “Direct payments are a freebie, and we don’t necessarily need that.”
She said crop insurance “helps you sleep at night.”
“I’ve bought it and sold it for over 10 years, and I believe crop insurance is here to stay,” she said. “Last year was the worst draught we’d seen in forever, but guys told me, ‘We’re good,’ because they had insurance.”
She also acknowledged the paradox of crop insurance being such a minute portion of the farm bill, and yet being so crucial to farmers.
“Crop insurance is a viable risk management tool, so it can’t go away,” she said. However, she predicted commissions will continue to drop, so the smaller agents will likely be eliminated.
Bill Urschel has a farm just east of Urbana, and he usually comes to Pam’s for coffee each morning.
He said he thought it was important to have discussions like this one about crop insurance and the future of the farm bill — what will change, and what will remain consistent. He also appreciated the talk about changes in equipment, which was led by representatives from Case IH.
“The two things that keep me up at night are the future of grain prices and crop production,” he said. “It’s always going to be unpredictable, because there are so many unknowns — some things, like weather, just can’t be known.”
Ted Biehl runs a fertilizer plant in Urbana, and he has breakfast at Pam’s most mornings. He also attended the meeting, and — like Urschel — he cited prices as his main source of anxiety.
“Commodity prices — price fluctuation — is the number one concern,” he said. “I’m buying fertilizer every week, and I don’t know how to handle (the fluctuations in prices.)”
“Prices are fluctuating too much,” he said. “Farmers just want some stability because farmers are used to stability.”
Biehl also favored reforming crop insurance so derelict farmers can’t take advantage.
“I want to see farmers protected, not losing farms because of a bad year, but some of the insurance programs have not been good for agriculture,” he said. “It’s a lottery, not an insurance program, and that has to go away.”
Kinser concurred with Biehl’s assessment, and said, “That will continue to go away.”
“It’s not right (to protect lazy farmers), and that’s not what insurance is designed for,” she said. “Insurance adjustors are trained to question, and they do question (claims).”
Biehl said that “everything else a farmer does is a conscious decision.”
“He has control over most things, but the one thing he can’t control is prices,” he said. “That’s where crop insurance comes in.”
Biehl also expressed dismay with the challenges of getting young people into farming, and Grebner said the U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently offering numerous incentives to convince a younger generation of farming’s viability.
Rick Gentis, agribusiness manager and senior vice president at iAB, stressed that inexperienced farmers shouldn’t expect expensive, state-of-the-art equipment right away.
Clint Jenkins, territory sales manager for Case IH, said the key to long-term farming success is “being patient.”
Brownfield, founded in 1972, includes Brownfield Ag News radio network, Brownfieldagnews.com, Brownfield Mobile and Brownfield’s Agriculture Today e-newsletter, according to Brownfield’s Cyndi Young. Brownfield has contractual partnerships with more than 340 affiliate radio stations in nine states across the Midwest that carry Brownfield radio programming.
Young said this is the first tour of this kind they’ve done, but the response has been positive so far, so they plan to do more of these events in the future.
“It’s a chance to talk about issues that are important to farmers — like crop insurance, the farm bill, etc. — and have a dialogue,” she said.