The Mississippi River watershed has fertile soil that is famously fertile, making the American Midwest cropland one of the most valuable and productive in all of the world.
The climate is expected to heat up, and the watershed will flood more often and more intensely. This means that more of the farmland will become underwater.
According to a new analysis of data by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), American taxpayers spend tens of million of dollars each year to encourage farmers to plant on land that floods frequently.
The land is currently unproductive and waterlogged. But if left fallow and returned to native plants, it could help combat climate change by storing carbon that’s otherwise released by farming, the authors of the analysis say.
“In these high-risk flooded areas, near rivers and streams, why are we continuing to spend money on crop insurance, instead of retiring these frequently flooded fields?” said Anne Schechinger, the lead author of the new analysis and a director with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that’s long been critical of the crop insurance program. “You have these flood plains and with climate change they’re flooding more than they used to. Why would you farm there, knowing they’re going to continue flooding?”
Schechinger’s analysis looked at an area called the Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area (MRCCA), a river basin that’s spread across 13 states in the South and Midwest, comprising nearly 400 million acres. The USDA identified the region when it created the popular conservation program in the 2014 Farm Bill. This program was meant to help farmers manage environmental problems. The program is often in high demand and funding is not always available.
Schechinger found that farmers received $1.5 Billion in crop insurance payments from the MRCCA for flooded lands between 2001-2020. Schechinger’s analysis showed that the same amount could have been spent on restoring or retiring more than 330,000 acres of farmland via USDA conservation programs.
“Retiring land is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming,” Schechinger said, noting that cropland returned to grassland, shrubs or trees is better at storing carbon.
Schechinger’s analysis is the latest in EWG’s critical examinations of the country’s crop insurance program. EWG and other environmental organizations have long argued against the program which costs approximately $9 billion per year and discourages farmers from adopting soil health and absorption techniques that increase carbon. It also encourages them to plant the exact same crops on environmentally sensitive and unproductive land.
“Without crop insurance and subsidies, a lot of this frequently flooded land would not be farmed anyway,” Schechinger said. “The crop insurance program is actively encouraging farming in this area where farming should not be done.”
60 percent of premiums paid by farmers are subsidized by the taxpayers. The program’s costs are increasing as more extreme weather, flooding, and drought is exacerbated by climate change. EWG’s recent analysis revealed that payments for drought-related loss rose 400% from 1995 to 2020 and rose 300% for flooding-related losses during the same period. More than two thirds of the $143 million in settlements paid to farmers went towards drought and rain damage.
Another study, published last year, blamed the increased costs of the crop insurance program directly on the effects of climate change—the first to do so.
“It’s essentially a freebee. There are no environmental requirements for farmers to receive this money,” said Silvia Secchi, a professor at the University of Iowa and an economist who studies the environmental impacts of agriculture.
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Secchi pointed out that Iowa’s farmers have 400,000 acres in floodplains, which means they flood every two years on average.
“It’s absolutely bananas that we have farmers planting in these places,” she said. “We should take subsidies away from these places or require people to do something for the money they’re getting.”
Crop insurance rates are based upon past yields. In theory, repeated flooding and drought on a specific piece of land would cause premiums to rise or discourage farmers from planting there year after year. Farmers bear some of these losses.
Secchi explained that rates can be calculated using county yield averages. This means that they may not reflect the full impact on a farm from repeated weather events.
Under the terms of the crop insurance program, farmers can “throw out” bad years in their calculations, effectively masking the impact of extreme weather events. A driver could erase repeated incidents from their record and get a premium rate based upon a better track record.
Congress, policymakers, and even critics, of the crop insurance program acknowledge the inherently risky nature of farmers’ work and should protect them with taxpayer support. This is in recognition of their vital role in providing food, fibre, and biofuels.
The program is not being altered by lawmakers.
At a hearing this month on the USDA’s role in combating climate change, U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.), the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, reiterated that position.
“I will not fundamentally upend our commodity, conservation and crop insurance programs to appease Washington think tanks,” he said. “I will reject complicating our programs and making climate the focus of every title of the upcoming farm bill reauthorization.”
Georgina Gusein
Reporter, Washington, D.C.
Source: Inside Climate News
