Taxpayers covered nearly $40 billion in crop insurance premiums in the Mississippi River region between 2001 and 2020, and that number is expected to increase sharply as climate change intensifies, according to an analysis of USDA data by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “The federal Crop Insurance Program must be reformed to encourage farmers to adapt to a rapidly changing climate before costs spiral even more out of control,” said Anne Schechinger, EWG’s Midwest director and author of the report. The report predicts that if the climate warms by 1-degree Celsius, premium subsidies could increase 22%. With 2 degrees of warming, that increase could be 57%.
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“As the USDA evaluates all of its programs for how they could better support climate adaptation and mitigation, the agency should be taking a long hard look at the Crop Insurance Program,” Schechinger said. In the 20-year period analyzed by EWG, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota received the most money in premium subsidies — more than $22.9 billion combined, or about 58% of total premium subsidies in the MRCCA — Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area, a USDA-designated “area of focus” encompassing more than 387 million acres in about 1,000 counties across 13 states.
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Comments: One policy analyst commented: “EWG has been discredited so many times. Crop insurance consistently operates under budget. The FY [fiscal year] [20]23 budget provides $13 billion total for all commodities, including livestock and dairy. If EWG were serious about saving money from crop losses it would stop trying to block crop protection products that limit crop losses due to drought and pests. Without those products, imagine what crop insurance would cost? If EWG cared about climate, it would stop blocking these crop protection products that allow farmers to plant cover crops and to do no till farming and other things EWG should want to encourage. This cognitive dissonance of EWG is just an example of why nobody takes EWG seriously.”
