This rainy spring made it difficult for farmers to plant crops, and that means many farmers are turning to crop insurance.
Matt Thelen, crop insurance specialist for the Michigan Farm Bureau, says about 80% of Michigan farmers have crop insurance.
“When we’re dealing with a spring like this, there's so many farmers that can’t yet get a crop in the ground and that affects their revenue and their livelihood,” Thelen says. “Paying crop insurance thankfully is one of the saving graces so they can have enough to farm the next year.”
Thelen says he’s received about 13 times more claims this year than normal. He says the insurance is cost effective, costing about $7 to $15 per acre for insurance.
“It's definitely going to get some of the farmers that have never use crop insurance before thinking twice about moving forward without some sort of kind of baseline protection,” he says. “The weather patterns nowadays have been so volatile that there’s many more risks when you put a crop in the field.”
You can listen to Matt Thelen's full interview with Stateside in the audio file above.
