A new report suggests Illinois farmers could do a better job of protecting their fields from severe drought.
The Federal Crop Insurance Program paid out more than three-billion dollars to Illinois farmers in the wake of 2012's drought - that's the highest payout of all the states that suffered through the extreme weather.
The National Resources Defense Council is out with a study that suggests farmers could have survived the drought much better if they had taken some basic soil conservation precautions such as planting cover crops or using no-till farming techniques. Claire O'Connor is a water policy analyst for the NRDC. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska and authored the study. She says fields in the Midwest where farmers took a more proactive approach to soil conservation survived the drought with fewer lost crops as well as higher yeilds when compared with loss at other farms in the same region. O'Connor says the federal government can encourage farmers to be more proactive about their land by making some small changes to the current federal crop insurance program guidelines that provide incentives for soil conservation such as sliding premiums that reward farmers similar to good driver discounts on car insurance.
The federal crop insurance program paid southern Illinois farmers more than 250-million dollars for heat related crop losses last year. In Jackson County farmers received 18-million for losses on about 138-thousand acres; Perry County farmers received nearly 25-million for 161-thousand acres farmed; Richland and Marion counties each received more than 52-million dollars in crop insurance payouts to farmers as a result of last summer's drought.
O'Connor says by using better soil management techniques Illinois farmers could have reduced insurance payouts by as much as 30-percent while increasing yields. The NRDC report is available on line at www.nrdc.org/soilmatters. The website also provides a county-by-county breakdown on the more than $13-Billion in crop insurance payouts nationwide.
