Officials View Damage: Ag Comissioner Roger Johnson Talks to Producers About Wet Fields, Crop Insurance

By Bewley, Matt

DEVILS LAKE – In response to widespread reports of crop damage because of flooding, North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture Roger Johnson toured the area and held two public forums Tuesday to get input from producers regarding the types and levels of damage they are seeing.

Johnson invited along Doug Hagel, regional director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency, which is responsible for administering federal crop insurance programs, to forums in Devils Lake and Milnor, N.D.

“I wanted to do two things,” Johnson said. “One was to make sure we had the Risk Management Agency out here because there clearly would be lots of crop insurance impact. These meetings are an opportunity for producers to describe the impact on their crops. A good deal of damage already has been done, and more is likely to come, even after things dry out.”

In Devils Lake, Johnson told the crowd of about 35 that he had flown over much of the affected areas in the state and seen firsthand the damage farmers are facing.

“We took some pictures, too,” he said, “to help with the push for permanent disaster assistance in the farm bill.

“The real purpose is to listen to you talk about what’s going on. We want to know what your losses look like, if you have drown-out or if you have disease pressures.”

Major damage

Several comments from the audience were from farmers who had seen or heard of other crops suffering major damage, including fields near Garske, N.D., that had suffered upward of 85 percent damage because of hail.

Hagel then took the floor, saying, “I talked to Roger Johnson’s staff a couple of weeks ago, and we still saw a lot of damage up in this area. A lot of the drainage has taken place. There was a lot of discussion about water management in Milnor. You could see that the waterways had been trenched out.

They’d had an inch of rain in last week, so the ground is still pretty soaked.”

Frustrations

There were several comments from the producers that expressed frustration at low pay-outs and high premiums of the crop insurance programs.

“Congress has mandated a loss ratio of $1,” Hagel said. “In other words, for every dollar paid out, we must take in a dollar in premiums. The problem is, as you keep doing that over the years, your rates are going to continue to climb. There’s a balance to maintaining an actuarially sound program.”

“It helps to have the congressman and the people here, too,” he said. “It’s the people – they drive the whole budget vote. On the last big crop insurance bill in 2000, their drive was to get that subsidy level up. But we need to a have a higher level of whole farm insurance. Most farmers just can’t afford that 30 percent deductible and some not even 10 percent.’Valuable farmers’

Also in attendance were state Rep. Dennis Johnson, R-Oberon, N.D., and Lance Gaebe, an adviser to North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven.

“The rest of America doesn’t seem to realize how valuable our farmers are,” Hagel said. “They’re dealing with urban congressmen. I’m here to listen and most importantly, to tell you that if you experience losses, make sure you contact your agent. One thing I’ve found is North Dakotans are well educated on their (crop) insurance, just from the losses we’ve had over the past 10 years.”

Gaebe said federal assessments are taking place in the state, in anticipation of distributing assistance funds.

“FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is now in the southeastern counties to assess whether they’ll be up for federal aid,” he said. “Part of why I’m here is to help get a handle on the width and breadth of the losses.”

But even when a declaration has been made, Gaebe warned producers it can take a while for the money to be distributed.

“Congress did pass a disaster assistance bill – unfortunately, the USDA may take upward of five months to deliver that money. They have to work through new software and documentation.”

Lake flooding

There was a lot of discussion related to Devils Lake flooding. Rep. Curt Hofstad, R-Devils Lake, displayed a series of aerial maps showing the growth of Devils Lake over the years.

“My job here today is to kind of turn the clock back to where we started back in ’92. The lake area then was about 43,000 acres. Then, in ’93, the rains started coming, and in 1997, the lake was up to about 100,000 acres. But if you look at the water in the basin, it’s now up to 144,000 acres. That’s our unique situation in Devils Lake. It continues to grow bigger and bigger, and that’s what we’re losing. That land no longer is useable, so we’re losing our economic engine that’s driving this community.”

That amounts to 101,000 acres lost to the farmers around the lake, he said.

Copyright Grand Forks Herald Inc. Jun 27, 2007

(c) 2007 Grand Forks Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.