Some new numbers are putting into perspective just how battered Texas farmers have been in recent years. A report examining crop insurance payouts finds Texas not only leads the nation in crop insurance payouts for lost crops, but the total annual amount of those payouts has quadrupled in the last 20 years, to about $1.1 billion per year since 2020.
In particular, the current decade has been brutal for Texas farmers, from the 2022 drought that wiped out 74% of the state's cotton crop, to the panhandle wildfires earlier this year. But beyond natural disasters, government policies have also done a whammy on farms, from inflation to "green" regulations. "The cost of inflation, the higher interest rates and higher cost of loans---all of those things are adding to more expensive costs of production," says Gary Joiner, spokesman for the Texas Farm Bureau. "So the crop insurance is reflecting some of those higher costs of business."
Joiner tells KTRH that conditions like the 2011 and 2022 droughts certainly contributed to exploding crop insurance costs, but the overall cost of doing business is equally to blame. "The amount of losses in total dollar value is much higher than it has been in years past, because the cost of business--of producing that food and fiber--is so much higher than it has been," he says.
That is why Joiner and other farm advocates are touting the importance of crop insurance as a necessity for mitigating those inevitable losses. Without it, the 2022 drought or this year's wildfires could have been an even bigger economic disaster for the state. "The Farm Bill is overdue for reauthorization, and crop insurance is an important part of that," says Joiner. "But don't be fooled (by these high payouts), the federal crop insurance program is a public-private partnership that, over the next ten years, will still account for just one-tenth of one percent of the federal budget."
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