House Subcommittee Passes Crop Insurance Bill

July 22,1999

The House agriculture risk management subcommittee has approved a crop insurance reform bill that goes to the full House Agriculture Committee on Tuesday. A livestock pilot program is included in the bill. The cost of the program could double to about $3 billion a year under the bill through lower premiums.

Rep. Tom Ewing (R-IL), chairman of the risk management subcommittee, predicted the bill would be finalized by the full House before the August recess. The bill seeks to provide affordable coverage at every level of insurance with strong incentives for farmers to buy higher levels of protection.

The measure also seeks to provide more affordable policies to protect farmers against price, income and production losses. It encourages more flexibility and diversity of coverage by expanding policy development and providing incentives for creating new policies. Reductions in production history would be limited; all farmers could drop one to two years of low yields.

"Producers will have noticeable improvements to their crop insurance in time for the coverage of the fall crop," said full committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX). "I am much more interested in rewarding production and basing coverage on the productive capability of farmers and ranchers, not on bureaucratic formulas...crop insurance improvements will offer producers better risk management choices for the coming crop year."