I’ll also note this:
Crop insurance companies are already strategizing how to minimize their losses as climate change intensifies. Since they receive federal subsidies, they cannot withdraw from markets as easily as home insurance providers have in fire-, hurricane- and flood-prone areas.
Last year, the federal government blocked insurance providers’ attempts to pull out of West Texas, a region that’s been scorched by heat and drought.
It seems to me that the problem isn’t that we shouldn’t be subsidizing farm insurance, but that we need tighter controls on what the insurance companies are allowed to do. We’ve seen it in every sector, insurance companies will take advantage of people with unfair policies and always refuse to pay out if they possibly can. But crop insurance is an important and valuable safeguard, we shouldn’t throw it out entirely, we just need to keep the insurers from being criminally greedy and make sure that even smaller farm operations have access to this service.
I agree. We all need farmers to do well in order to live.