01/04/05 Simplifying crop insurance

Farm and Ranch January 4, 2005 The Risk Management Agency is looking at making Federal Crop Insurance simpler for wheat growers. Currently there are numerous policy choices; Multi-Peril Crop Insurance, Crop Revenue Coverage, Income Protection and in some areas Revenue Assurance. Dave Paul of the regional office of the Risk Management Agency says they are looking at combining all these options into one wheat policy. Paul: "We hope that this combined policy will include all the options of all of those we are going to combine, but fit them in or mold them into one insurance policy. It is going to be much less complicated. We are hoping that we are not going to give anything up. Hope that by doing this it is going to be simple, or as simple as it can be, less redundancy and just reduce the complexities of our program." Paul says the agency hopes to get a proposed rule out early this year. Paul: "There will be a comment period and what we would like to do is spend a lot of time with the wheat grower organizations for example, and their members and committees and go through it and make sure they have ample opportunity to comment on this change in the policy to ensure the end result is something that works for Pacific Northwest wheat growers." Paul says there is a slight possibility this simplification effort could be in place for the 2006 crop year, but it's more likely to be 2007. Paul: "But a lot of work needs to be done between now and then to take all those components and kind of mold them into one policy." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.