News

Under water and grateful for crop insurance

Twelve-hundred acres of Martin Barbre’s crops are under water and he tells Brownfield he’s thankful for Crop Insurance. Barbre farms in southeastern Illinois, near Carmi, where two rivers have overflowed.  It’s mostly soybeans that are affected.

“River levels are staying high and it will probably be mid-July before we really get into a replanting situation. Most of the ground, fortunately for us, most of our acres underwater this year are beans. Some of our neighbors aren’t so fortunate. But, the corn acres, as soon as it dries up, we’ll replant them to beans and then probably after July 15th we’ll replant the beans.”

Barbre says the drought a few years ago and now this year of too much rain in much of the Corn Belt shows the importance of crop insurance…

“Huge, of huge importance. In 20-12 we used, we had it because of the drought and now we’re using it because of the flooding.”

Barbre is chairman of the National Corn Growers Corn Board. He says they’ve worked hard at NCGA to keep the crop insurance program sound and workable for producers across the country in times like these.