Every farmer knows the risk of hail, but when it comes, it’s devastating. This last week there was a storm that brought hail clear across the state of Montana almost. It wasn’t a wide swath, but where it landed, there was quite a bit of damage. No farmer wants a paycheck from insurance companies. They would rather harvest their crops, especially this year, because they looked so good. Nothing like bring in the crops!
For those of you who don’t know, there is Crop-hail insurance. It is a type of insurance that pays the farmer for any damage caused by hail or fire. Farmers can buy it while their crops are still in the field waiting to be harvested. It protects the livelihood of farmers, who depend on the weather to give them a crop to harvest. Hail can destroy any crop in any field while leaving the crop across the road untouched. For that reason, it is sold on an acre-by-acre basis so farmers can cover the fields that are more prone to have a hail storm. It is not the same as Multiple Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI), which will include the crop from disease, natural disasters, and changes in commodity prices.
However, if you are a vegetable farmer in Big Sandy, like Charley Overbay, there is no Crop-hail insurance to help protect his investment.
It’s going to be a come-back year. I visited with Charley about his specialty crops. There are three different crops Painted Mountain Corn, Potatoes, and a variety of squash that he and his family depend on. He told me, “The potatoes are probably best off, because,” he said with a laugh, “they weren’t fully weeded. So, they had some protection. The corn had made its mark. It was knee-high on the 4th of July, so it was on time, but it hadn’t sent out its tassel. The reproduction parts are still inside the whirl inside the middle of the
plant, so they were protected. This corn has suckers at the bass. The leaves that were there were pretty much destroyed, but it will make more leaves. The squash is pretty much flattened to the ground. I probably won’t get hardly squash from them this year.”
As far as Specialty Crop-hail insurance for fruit and vegetables, he talked to a local insurance agent who told him that insurance is based on historic county yield averages. This county did not have any base for vegetable crops. They couldn’t determine what would be an average county production. Therefore there was no insurance for his crops. So, if there is no county yield record, he couldn’t get any insurance.
Charlie has a very positive outlook on life, but he was in the tractor at his garden when it got destroyed. “I was out in the tractor cutting the cover crop and baling it. He looked up briefly and saw the wind coming. “There was not a gradual approach. It was just a solid wall of hail”. His wife told me, “He cried. I cried when he told me. It did hurt.” Charlie said, “I try to praise God in everything. This was more of come what may!”
“The first hail was a solid 5 minutes straight from the southwest with a strong wind; then it rained again, it came back the second this time from the North. The second time wasn’t as bad.”
In Big Sandy, the winter squash is his most significant sales. He has two plots, one at Quinn Farm, and an acre plot at Glenn Terry’s farm. The hail was more severe at the Quinn Farm plot. However, what he grows at the Glenn Terry plot is mostly for a seed contract.
