(Radio Iowa) – Fourth District Congressman Randy Feenstra says he’s focusing part of the new Farm Bill on the cost of crop insurance.

Feenstra, a Republican from Hull, says the expense of crop insurance is a major barrier to young farmers who are just getting started in production agriculture.
“There’s this big push where China and other countries are buying our farmland and the reason that’s happening is because that next generation cannot afford or cannot buy that land from their parents,” Feenstra says. “One of the big problems is the input costs.”

Feenstra says he and the other members of the House Agriculture Committee are considering discounts on crop insurance for those farmers who are just starting off. “A new beginning farmer for the first five years, you get up to a 15% discount on their crop insurance to lower that input, so we can keep that farmland in Iowa and with the Iowa farmer,” Feenstra says, “and then it slowly ratchets down after five years, four years, three years, it goes from 15% down to 10%.”

Crop insurance is one of the biggest input costs farmers pay each year and he says some may choose 85% coverage, or even as low as 70%.
“Because of the costs, a lot of farmers are going down to that lower amount and that’s where operational loans from the bank, they get a little concerned,” Feenstra says. “You have a big hail out or a catastrophic event, then all of the sudden, you put yourself in peril because you only have X-percent of coverage for that crop.”

Feenstra says the largest part of the Farm Bill is food programs, including SNAP. He says farm state members of the committee want to make the program more efficient as SNAP payments have exploded in recent years.

(Radio Iowa) – The severe drought in eastern Iowa has had an impact on the Christmas tree crop that will likely show up several years down the road. Mark Banowetz started the Cedar’s Edge Evergreen Market in Ely seven years ago, and told K-C-R-G T-V he is looking forward to the first season of sale. “These trees that we put in that were a foot or 16 inches, they’ve grown to 9 feet or so,” Banowetz says. He says the drought isn’t impacting the bigger trees, but the 500 seedlings he planted this year that have struggled.

“We’re losing a lot of seedlings,” he says. Iowa Christmas Tree Association President Bob Moulds, says Banowetz isn’t alone. He said a lot of newer farmers were also struggling, and there isn’t crop insurance for Christmas trees. “If they die, they die,” he said. “There’s no insurance, there’s nothing.” Moulds is the owner of the Wapsie Pines Tree Farm in Fairbank, and says he started changing his ways after the 2013 drought. He tells K-C-R-G- T-V he started watering and mulching each of the four-thousand trees he planted this year.

“If we had not mulched all these trees and individually watered them three times while it was dry, a large percent of them would not have made it,” said Moulds. As the Association’s new President, Moulds said he wanted to show other new farmers like Banowetz, what he learned over the years. So, they too can make it through droughts like the one we’re seeing right now.

KCRG-TV photo

Moulds says when tree farmers have bad drought years they can usually plant twice the number of seedlings the following year to make up for the ones they lost. But he said that can also be a risk if there’s another drought the next year.