Always Something.....

 With the march 15 crop insurance deadline creeping up on us a lot of big decisions regarding crop insurance will be made in the next month. A lot of the previous policies that were offered have now been combined into one which is supposed to make things a little easier.  However, as things are supposed to get easier something else comes along to offset it.  In our area the high risk maps have been updated or changed and now include a lot more acres than previous maps.  Basically, high risk areas mean any field that is close to a creek and is prone to flooding is in a high risk area costing the producer a lot more money to insure those acres.  In our area we have several drainage ditches creeks and many of these areas previously were not included on the high risk map.  The new maps now include lots of these areas and on our farm about 5% of our acres are now in the high risk area. The yield history is very good on these farms so we are hoping that we can get the premium reduced or even taken out of the high risk area, but if not we probably will not be able to afford the coverage like we have had in the past.  Once again we are left to wonder who, why, and how the new maps were drawn and what the reasoning was.