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Let's not forget the Farm Bill.
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NE Ridger
Posted 9/3/2017 21:33 (#6227220 - in reply to #6227133)
Subject: RE: Let's not forget the Farm Bill.


EC Nebraska

JUST LEARNING - 9/3/2017 21:02

I don't know total bushels but there have been a lot of dry land acres in kansas that have been brought into production in the last 10 years that would be very questionable without crop insurance.  KS I think is #7 in total production and a majority of the acres are dry.  The far eastern counties wouldn't change many acres but yield goals would change.  I could see acres going back to grass in western ND, western SD, western NE dry land and Oklahoma and Texas dry land.  It would just be too risky to grow corn in those states because raising under 30 bu corn is a real possibility.

Good native grass will rent for just as much or more than a thin soil high risk crop field. Currently good pasture sells for just as much or more than thin row crop. Take away the crop insurance floor and it would get worse.


In my opinion crop insurance has brought a lot of acres into production that would never of came out of grass without it.




So grassland in those areas can compete with corn.  I hadn't realized that.   If that's the case, then eliminating crop insurance probably would turn a few acres back to grass.   Of course, it's not cheap to establish a high quality pasture once it's been broken out for row crop, but it would happen for a few acres.  

I still don't think that it would amount to a lot of bushels.  After, these are acres with very unreliable yields.  Someone posted a map this summer of South Dakota showing total corn production by county.   IIRC, the eastern third of the state produced almost all of the bushels.     The western two thirds was a pretty small portion of the total production.   



I don't understand the comment about changing yield goals without crop insurance.   I have dryland acres, including some fairly drouthy soils with APH under 100 bpa.   I don't try to pump inputs because of insurance.   Maybe I'm just the odd one out, but I always try to produce the most bushels on the least inputs every year.   I can't think of any ways that insurance affects my management decisions, except perhaps that sometimes I haven't bothered to replant drowned out spots if it's late enough that the replant crop might get hit with frost.    It certainly doesn't affect my yield goals.   

Seed corn is expensive, so I VR the seed on some fields based on zones heavily influenced by 2012 yield maps.   (when part of a field yielded 140 bpa and other parts yielded zero, I think those are useful maps)   I fertilize for 110% of APH and I can't see changing that whether or not I have insurance.    

But I may well be the odd man out on that.  Recent conversations with some of my neighbors indicate that they do fertilize and plant dryland more heavily than do I.    Maybe I'll ask them if losing crop insurance would affect them.   

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