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Crop Insurance, Food Security, and the Real Cost of Farming · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign this is Tillery Timmons Sims and I want to welcome you back for another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast that's brought to you by the Sand Hillary Research association or Sarah. Sarah is interested in any topic that impacts any of our ecosystems. So I. Our economic ecosystem or our ag ecosystem, our environmental ecosystem, anything that impacts us, we are interested in that. And so this is a topic today that impacts not only our ag ecosystem, but it also impacts our economic ecosystem. And that is crop insurance. So I have heard my entire life growing up on the farm, I've heard people that don't understand farming complain and express concern about the amount of money that farmers get in subsidies. And so we are going to kind of have a conversation about crop insurance, which is kind of what you might think of as the new type of subsidy that started several years ago. And I have asked my friend Delinda Hicklin to join us. Delinda, thank you so much for coming.
• 1:20
  Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Tillery. I'm happy to talk about the importance and the, the whys and hows of crop insurance.
• 1:28
  Speaker A: Awesome. So before we get started, let's let people have a little information about your background, where you grew up and who you're connected to, because all that matters.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: I'm a farm kid. I grew up on a cotton farm southeast of Ropesville. My parents moved here, started farming and also started working at Buster's Gin east of Ropesville. So my entire life has been involved in the cotton industry. And about 26 years ago, my mother, who had been selling hail insurance through the GIN office and then started selling federal crop insurance when it became a thing, needed some help and persuaded me to join her. So we operated a crop insurance agency here in the Rooksville area ever, ever since then earlier this year, due to a lot of factors, one being that my mother's retiring, we became part of Capital Farm Credit insurance.
• 2:34
  Speaker A: And so for people who don't know Capital Farm Credit is. How would you explain that to people that aren't an ag. That. That's our farm credit system, Right.
• 2:43
  Speaker B: They loan to ag related enterprises. Farmers and other ag related enterprises, yes.
• 2:49
  Speaker A: Are they part of the CO bank system?
• 2:52
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 2:52
  Speaker A: The Federal. They're part of the federal lending system, correct?
• 2:56
  Speaker B: The Federal farm lending system. Yes.
• 2:58
  Speaker A: So we kind of have our own system. So as, as people may or may not realize, I mean, risk is always involved in business, but the type of risk that agriculture faces every year is, is very different. And there is an extreme. It's, it's a high risk business. Most People have everything on the line every year. So it's, it is different from, you know, ensuring just a regular, you know, restaurant or, you know, a store that sells consumer goods or whatever. It's different. And so, Delinda, give us a little bit, maybe the history of how it came to be. Can you do some of that for us, provide some information on that?
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Sure. I'm going to be talking in general terms today. I don't have all the dates and all that.
• 3:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: And I need to always put a disclaimer out here that again, we're talking in general terms and when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, you need to be talking to a subject matter expert, an agent. But in general terms, for so long, the only insurance available to a crop grower was private products. That most typical was hail insurance. But a farmer has a huge capital investment from the beginning in land, equipment, etc. And it takes a lot of money, particularly with row crops, which we grow in this region, takes a lot of money to get a crop in the ground. And it was difficult for them to manage that financial risk to the point where they could get financing. And so over a period of years, crop insurance developed as a federal program starting in the mid to late 80s, and since then it has grown many arms and tentacles and includes more and more crops and farmers every year. But at its basis, it's just a risk management tool where the farmer shares the risk but has some backup.
• 5:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's not, it's not a complete 100% safety net.
• 5:10
  Speaker B: Correct. It is. It's a way for a farmer to predict what his financial risk is going to be and attempt to cover it through that program while also bearing part of the cost of doing that.
• 5:24
  Speaker A: And to think about how much it would cost to bear that burden of cost of that insurance, the premium, what the government does is they, they help to cover some of that cost because it just would be astronomical for, for farmers.
• 5:38
  Speaker B: Correct. And crop insurance is a unique situation in that it is federally administered, but it's delivered through privately owned insurance providers. So there are actually three, three different arms here, taking on parts of the risk. The government, of course, with the premium subsidies and the subsidies they pay, the contracts they make with the insurance providers who then take on the bulk of the risk and then the farmer pays a portion of that premium to share the risk. So it operates differently than other insurance programs in that in order for it to work at all, it's got, we've got to have some shared risk because farming in exclusion to Almost any other business is so weather affected that it's, it's much harder to predict the risk that's going to be assumed from year to year.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: And the impact, the negative impact that it would have on the consumer for farmers not to have some type of safety net is. I don't think that people may be down the supply chain recognize that it's not just. It's not like you're paying farmers to stay in business. It's like you're paying. It's a defense. It's part of our national defense. I mean, if we don't have farmers, we don't have, we don't have food and clothes completely dependent on other countries. And so it is, it is vital to me and to every regular consumer that farmers stay in business.
• 7:23
  Speaker B: Yes. And I, I was going to mention something directly to that same area. It's a national security issue and people laugh when you say that. But if you think about it, we have the most efficient, least expensive, highest quality, safest, most abundant food supply in the world, and we export a lot of those products across the world. If our ag industry fails in the United States, the whole country pays for that. I think another aspect that we get into with the public is that they see reports of the farm bill this and the farm bill that without realizing that the actual farm crop insurance and other farm programs are a very, very, very small percentage of that farm bill. The bulk of the farm bill goes to nutrition.
• 8:11
  Speaker A: That's so true. Yeah. And I think I'm trying to remember if we have a blog post about that or not, but it would be interesting. I may write one and put one up so people can see. Even just a snapshot, like there's a really great. You can go to the federal budgets, got a great web website, and you can literally pull up a graphic of how much money has been spent. Spent and how much money is to be spent. And it's phenomenal. And, and it's shocking when you look at the farm bill to see what's going where.
• 8:43
  Speaker B: Right. Most of it's going through nutrition programs.
• 8:46
  Speaker A: Which part of that, you know, we, and we do, I know we do have a blog post about that. Like a part of that, that whole system was, was set up because we had, we had an abundance of commodities and we wanted to get those, you know, out to people. And, and so that it was helpful on two, two levels. We were feeding hungry people and we weren't having to throw away, you know, waste commodities. And so, you know, that, that's kind of Like a mutually beneficial part of the farm bill. And I don't know anymore how much mutual benefit that is directly to farmers. I, I'd have to think about that for a while.
• 9:24
  Speaker B: I don't know either. I don't know that the linkage is there like it was in the beginning.
• 9:30
  Speaker A: I don't really think that it's. You would say that the farmer benefits from that portion of the farm bill in, in many ways at all.
• 9:39
  Speaker B: I agree with you.
• 9:40
  Speaker A: So I'm looking up here and we're, we're seeing that 80% of the farm bill is allocated to nutritional programs and the remaining 20% goes to the farmers. So that is not much. And if you, if you ask what portion of the farm bill is part of the federal budget, less than 2%. So 20% of less than 2% for the amount of backlash I think that we get from it. And I mean, I think there's other, you know, other things that you can have arguments about this or that about how, how it's structured maybe, but the, the, the value of it and the amount of the budget that it takes is so minuscule for the amount of talk that is so often surrounding it.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Yes, there's always pressure points around payment limits and subsidies without, I think, without many people really understanding how small a portion of it it really is.
• 10:50
  Speaker A: If, if you were to, to guess, because we've had several bad years here in a row, and I mean, weather's always extreme in a lot of places, but it seems like it's always extremely extreme here. But how many, how many farmers do you think, if it weren't for insurance, I mean, farmers do you think would have lost without insurance? Can you, do you have an idea of like, percentage wise?
• 11:15
  Speaker B: No, I wouldn't even guess a percentage. But let me put it this way. To get an operating loan from a lender, whether it's farm credit or a commercial bank, you have to, for any kind of business, you have to provide some collateral. Crop insurance is the collateral for most of the operating loans. So if I do not have any way to ensure part of that loan that I'm needing, credit is not going to bother with me. Now, I'm going to speak mostly regarding cotton, and that's what I'm most familiar with, row crops. Every farmer of every crop in every situation has got to have operating money from some source. And without that, there's no farming. And you will hear people talking about all good things, about the smaller farms, the farm to table, et cetera, and, and those are great, but they are not at a scale and efficiency to provide the amount of food and fiber that we need in the country, much less for exports. So we've got to be realistic about that. Without collateral for a loan, the loan doesn't happen and the farming doesn't happen. The weather conditions in West Texas specifically, but really the entire state of Texas are volatile. We probably have one of the highest loss ratios in crop insurance in the United States. We are a huge state with a lot of farmland. Crop insurance is absolutely essential to the farmers of this state and most of the other commercial farming states.
• 12:52
  Speaker A: You know, I mean, I think we, we need two things. We need this huge system, what you might call the long value chain. And we need that short, you know, local value chain too. Into to your point, it's not any easier for someone farming 10 acres to make money than it is for somebody that's farming, you know, 10,000 acres. Like, it takes a lot of money.
• 13:16
  Speaker B: It does. And I mean, it's just a different, it's just a different budget, same problems.
• 13:21
  Speaker A: Same problems, different budget. And the reason that farmers have continually gotten bigger and bigger and bigger is because they're. The ability to make profit per acre has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.
• 13:34
  Speaker B: Correct.
• 13:34
  Speaker A: Because as we know, cotton prices are. I don't remember the year, but it was in the 70s. They're the same as they were sometime in the 70s. What the farmer gets paid.
• 13:44
  Speaker B: I looked this morning. The December futures for cotton is 66 cents. I'm pretty sure my grandfather in the 50s got paid that.
• 13:52
  Speaker A: I was going to say, that's lower than I saw. Yeah, that. So I mean, for people to understand, like everything's being impacted by inflation except what the farmer gets for their, for what they grow, whatever that mess is, something's creating that mess. But that's, that's the system that we're, that we're farming in. And when you're looking at a farmer who's taking out a million dollar loan every year just to cover their expenses of growing the cop cross crop that year, that's why they need that collateral. Because also, you know, think about when people talk about how difficult it is to get in farming because when you have to have that much overhead to run your business for a year and you don't own your own land, how are you going to buy a $400,000 tractor?
• 14:39
  Speaker B: Input costs from equipment, seed, chemicals, fertilizers, input costs are at probably their highest ever. Are pretty close.
• 14:48
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: And we have market prices depressed for a multitude of reasons, but market Prices that, you know, we were getting paid 40 years ago when our input costs were much lower.
• 15:02
  Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. You know, I was just telling someone while ago that my, my son located a. A really awesome recording of my husband's grandparents from 1978. And it was in the Southwest collection. And it is about farming. His granddad came to this area in the 20s, and this was in 1978. And they were talking about, well, you know, the small farms have gone out and, you know, there used to be a house at least on every, you know, half section here. So every half mile there was a house. And now it's not like that. It's kind of just us and, you know, one other person and. And everybody's got to be at least a thousand acres, you know. And they said, but you. How much are you? And he was like a section and a half. And they said, well, you know, are you going to get a bigger plow? Because I think he was at. I'm trying to remember if he was four row or six row at that time. Six row plow goes, you know, the bigger you get, the more you got to take on. And so he said, you know, I just, I'm just not going to do that. And the other thing he said was about as well and just not pushing as well to. He's like, I know I can't push that. Well, you know, I got to be responsible and, you know, just so fascinating to hear in 1978 that they were talking about some of the same things that we're talking about now. And like, some things that just haven't changed. But what has changed is that, that they, they made a good living off a section and a half.
• 16:31
  Speaker B: And I mean, I think a lot of these problems are universal both in time and in geography. They're on a different, different risk level than our parents and grandparents faced.
• 16:53
  Speaker A: Hi, friends. Here on the high plains, we have got a chance to work with NASA's develop project. The focus is cover crops using satellite tools to identify things like, like when they were planted and how they're managed. And how can we build real research to see what value they bring or maybe they don't bring. So if you're a farmer, you're planting cover crops, we'd love your help. A short form will be sent to you with some basic information like your planning date, termination date, maybe the years that you had cover crops. Your information is going to stay protected, but it'll make a really big difference in showing what cover crops are really worth having in our region. If you want more information? Want to be part of this? You can visit sara-conservation.com we'll have some information there. And you can also reach out to me at contact sarah-conservation.com and I would be happy to put your name on the list. Thank you very much. When you were part of tall, you're a tall alumni like I am. Where did you guys go on your international trip?
• 18:04
  Speaker B: I'm so glad you asked because we went to Panama and Brazil, to Mato Grasso in Brazil where they grow huge amounts of cotton that we taught them to grow.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: They sued us and one I did is a very sad and troubling tale. But they are our biggest competitor now and interestingly enough it feels like to me that, that the entire world is, is pushing certain standards and some, some are good and some are not so good on, on us that Brazil somehow.
• 18:36
  Speaker B: Gets a pass and that's. It was a fascinating trip because I had always wanted to go there. I had heard my dad and other people talk about the 10,000 acre fields and mile long rows and you know, is kind of mythical here almost right. But we got to speak to some real farmers there and you know, they have their challenges just like we do. But what they don't have is just like you said, they're not being held to the same standards environmentally. Some things that we're required to deal with, they are not. And we won't even get into details about how they're acquiring that farmland is by chopping up the Amazon.
• 19:16
  Speaker A: Well, not only that, I mean if you look real deeply, I mean there's whole indigenous tribes that have been wiped out in a chase to get that land, you know, and not that we don't have some of that story in our own history, but it's 2025, you know, and this is history repeating itself that nobody's talking about.
• 19:35
  Speaker B: Same is true there is true here. Once we develop land away from agriculture, it will not go back to agriculture. They're having to develop land that to farm that probably shouldn't be because the other land is being developed well and.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: Also because they have been in a race to frankly to beat us. And they are. And I would say if you think about how we've always said we're feeding the world, I think Brazil probably has that title.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: Another thing, I don't know how far into the politics you want to get in this, but there's an evident interest from China in buying and assisting them with building infrastructure in Brazil probably finally getting the 20 year railroad bills, probably with China as well.
• 20:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 20:23
  Speaker B: And that is to our detriment. We export a lot of agricultural commodities to China.
• 20:29
  Speaker A: Well, you know, and I think that China's just, you know, they're not willing to, I think, put themselves anymore at a risk of the tariffs because we're not the only game in town anymore. We now have to, we have to get in there and figure out how we're going to play in that in this new world that we're in.
• 20:48
  Speaker B: Yes. And I'm, I'm gonna loop back just for a second about the subsidy and.
• 20:53
  Speaker A: Insurance, how this plays into this. Yes, yes.
• 20:56
  Speaker B: We spoke to some lobbyists and politicians in Brazil, and you can't get a straight answer from them about how much subsidies their farmers are receiving. What their crop insurance program is in its infancy. They don't have commodity markets the way that we do to help them establish coverage process. Yeah. But they're, they're rapidly developing it. When we, when you hear American people questioning and even complaining about, well, I'll just use crop insurance as an example. Premium subsidies, I don't think they understand that we are probably the least subsidized.
• 21:41
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 21:43
  Speaker B: Ag industry in developed world.
• 21:45
  Speaker A: And to that point, when I was in Poland on, on our tall trip, you know, they're the EU subsidies for farmers. Like. Well, in fact, you, you guys hosted a couple of farmers this summer from Poland, and one of them was discussing that they were putting in a large grain. Grain storage facility that cost, I think, half a million dollars and the EU paid for half of it.
• 22:12
  Speaker B: Now it cost over a million dollars and then you pay for half of it. I have hosted four farmers from Poland over the last three years. Every one of the four of them has had grants, loans, or some kind of assistance from the eu, either with marketing contracts, equipment, that sort of thing. The EU is very definitely subsidizing agriculture across.
• 22:38
  Speaker A: Well, and it is because they have gone hungry. And you know, even when we were there, they were backtracking on a lot of the green deal, Green New Deal stuff because the war had happened. Covid. And the war. And they were like, wait a minute. This. We can't, we cannot implement policies that are to decrease production of our own food. We're going to go hungry. Like, I mean, just reality sunk in, you know. And so I think that we don't have. We have. It's kind of like to me, it's the same thing we think about when we're talking to people about water conservation in the state of Texas. And people, when they turn the tap on, they you know, you just never think about it because the water's there when you turn the tap on and the food is there. And I think we had a minor wake up call during COVID but we forget so soon. But if we, if we think about that, you know, and in some ways, I wonder, you can tell me what you think about this, Delinda. Like if we look at less exporting, which is where we are right now, we've got, we've got more competition and we have tariff issues, so we're exporting more, will that help us beep up, beef up our own reliance on our own products? More like, because we do bring in a lot of things from other countries that we, we, we might could grow here if it was worth growing. But a farmer is not going to, they're not doing this because they are volunteers. They're not volunteering to grow your food. It's, it's their business.
• 24:26
  Speaker B: Yes, and I, I mean, I think there's, there's arguments on both sides of that proposal. One of the problems we're going to have with that is that we don't have the infrastructure in place for some of the products that we're currently importing. The import, export is completely out of whack right now. We don't have the infrastructure to process some of the things that we're currently importing. We import. I don't know the percentages, but a high percentage of our fresh produce that we buy at the grocery store is imported, a lot of it from South America or Mexico. Just in regards to cotton. We made it impossible for textile mills to operate in the United States. So now all the textile mills are overseas. If we're going to have to use our own cotton that we're growing, we're going to have several years run up to getting facilities in place to do.
• 25:21
  Speaker A: That and, and billions of dollars. And to that point, I don't know if you're aware that. Well, so we have the Texas Ag Fund and it's, it's through our, our state and they've increased that ag fund and which is, which is great. Well, one of the things they're talking about is like we have, let's just say you have four years in a row where we have not had a cotton crop three years in a row, however many years it is. So what happens is the gin makes no money. The local gin, where cotton farmers take their cotton, there's no income, there's no money coming in to sustain the infrastructure that we have to have to process our cotton. So Some of them consolidate, some of them just close and then, then what happens when there's, there's not the infrastructure left? You know, it's like I was texting Lacey the other day because, um, somebody was asking me about, you know, contracting for a certain crop and I said, hey, could you grow, can you grow this? Have you grown this before? And she said, I'd grow it now, but there's no place to take it. There's no place for me to take. So I think it's part of, part of ag that people might not think about very often is it's not just the farm, it's, it's everything that gets food infrastructure, the infrastructure that processes in a way that makes, makes what comes off my farm be in a usable form for, for, for you.
• 26:50
  Speaker B: Correct. And I mean we'll use West Texas as an example again, but this is true of other regions. There's only a limited number of crops that we can grow here. Their water is a big limitation here and you know, growing season. And that's true of every other region in the United States. And so if you want strawberries year round, well, that can't happen if they're only American grown. It's not possible to do that. It's not possible to grow enough bananas for all of us to have bananas if we're only growing them in the United States. So it's going to require a mind shift in terms of, you know, the general public. Do we really want to feed ourselves and do without things that are out of season or have we gotten so used to buying whatever food we want to eat at any time in place that we have locked ourselves into this import export cycle?
• 27:49
  Speaker A: I don't know, I do feel like, you know, we, during my, our lifetime, you know, we've seen a lot of different. I don't know if you probably remember when they drove the tractors down to Washington D.C. you know, so I mean we've seen a lot of change in agriculture and I mean, I think probably could be argued that during our lifetime probably has been the most, most change, I don't know, between the 50s, after the 50s, it feels like it's kind of really when it took off, but.
• 28:17
  Speaker B: Well, I'll just put it this way. My father, who's in his 80s, picked cotton by hand growing up and he has lived through an entire revolution in the cotton industry. We now have million dollar cotton strippers that require one person to operate in the economies of scale that we've come to. And you know, he also ran the gin he went from, you know, a belt driven gin to a cotton gin that if you went in it today looks like a NASA control center.
• 28:52
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 28:54
  Speaker B: There's been a huge revolution in agriculture like you said, just in our lifetime, but particularly small. I'm like my dad's lifetime. And that cycle repeats itself over and over and over. It's impossible to predict what my kids will see in their lifetime. But it's always changing and evolving in ways that a lot of people don't understand. And crop insurance kind of came out of that 80s ag movement to a degree.
• 29:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:25
  Speaker B: Because part of what they were protesting about was lack of any safety net.
• 29:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean we still have, there's so many things that we need to work on, but if we, and I mean, I think that we've done a good job lobbying to keep that in place, you know, and so we aren't looking at losing any of that, are we?
• 29:50
  Speaker B: No. And in fact, current events in Congress have bolstered some of the permanent programs and also offered a couple of programs to address the past two years. Disaster agriculture issues. Yes, people like to call them disaster, but I don't like that term so much. I think it's more of a realization that events beyond our control, weather events beyond our control sometimes create a situation where even the, the best risk management planning can't withstand the, the wins.
• 30:30
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:32
  Speaker B: And I, I, people ask me all the time, why, if we have all these crop insurance and FSA programs while we have these disaster programs and you have to understand money that they're giving them this year goes against past years losses.
• 30:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's why you're like, hey, this is for 2023.
• 30:53
  Speaker B: And the other thing a lot of people don't understand is that the FSA programs that are federal programs that you don't pay premiums for, they are addressed this year's crop, but they're paid a year later. And so there's a variety of things in our, our laws and regulations and in USDA programs, crop insurance included, that attempt to just provide a safety net. No one is, is making a profit off insurance payments and disaster payments. We're hoping to maintain the status quo, to do it another year.
• 31:30
  Speaker A: Of course, like every other industry, there's, I'm sure there's fraud, you know, and generally that's what people hear about. But you know, for the most part it's, you know, people are, are really dependent on that to keep, to keep going. And to that point, what, what happens if you have, in a county where you had, you know, 300 farmers, now you get 12.
• 31:54
  Speaker B: We're not at that point yet, but I already see in my customer area, particularly with non irrigated ground, it has become harder to rent that. Oh, it's yes, much harder to make any kind of profit off of it.
• 32:10
  Speaker A: That's right. And you know, in particular, like, I've been a tenant and I've, and now I'm a landlord and I know that when there's certain crops that I make money on that my tenant didn't make money on, you know, and so if I didn't have, if I didn't have the experience being that tenant, and I was just a landlord, you know, I might make it really hard for somebody to farm my land and make money, you know, because I wasn't aware, but I'm very aware, you know, and very grateful that someone is there to, to do a good job on that land. And I want him to stay in business.
• 32:46
  Speaker B: And I want to address part of what you just said because here's another misconception that I believe people have, they. Some people believe that the farmer is just out there destroying the land, getting whatever profit he can off of it and moving on. And if you think about that for even a second, that makes no sense. If you're in it for the long haul to farm, then you have to attempt to conserve the resources that you have on that farm, from the soil to the water, all of it. So farmers by nature are conservationists. And we're trying to figure out in our climate here how we can do that and enhance what we've been given and not deplete it. There's government programs that assist with that CRP and other programs. But I think it's very important that people understand it's the farmer's nature to conserve the resources he has because he needs them next year and the next year and the next.
• 33:43
  Speaker A: You know, one of the, back to the, the conversation that I heard recorded from 78, one of the things that Doug's granddad said in that was that deep breaking, like how it saved, like he said, man, it saved this country. When we figured out how to deep break because it quit the land from blowing so bad. And not people don't deep break anymore very much. You know, what we know now about, you know, things, we know different things. And in some, in some production methods, people do need a deep break. There's situations where that needs to happen. But we also know that every time you deep break, you, you're, you're cutting up the, the fungi Highways, basically, you know what I mean? So there's no way anybody knew that. No way. And, you know, so what I see is that as the knowledge becomes available, farmers begin to adapt. Some of them will adopt things slower than others.
• 34:44
  Speaker B: That's true of any innovation.
• 34:45
  Speaker A: It is, it, it, it really is, you know, and so farmers want to, yes, take care of what they have. They also have to make a living. So they're constantly balancing cost versus benefit, always, you know, and so when people are asking, well, why don't every farmer do X, Y and Z? You know, and you kind of want to go, well, let me go into your business that I know nothing about and figure out how I can tell you to do X, Y and Z better. You know, I mean, it's, it's very interesting because it is true that the business that, that the farmer has is. It's almost like a village activity. I don't know what to say, how to say, you know what I'm saying? Because it's like, it has a huge impact on our environment, over billions of acres. And yes, it has a huge impact on, on our health, on the food that we eat. So there's a lot. Not only is it a risk of a job, but it's also a huge burden in ways, I think, that we are just now even becoming more and more aware of as people begin to think. I think food is, is medicine, you know, and so now it's like, okay, they're looking at, you know, they're not just looking at where, where is this coming from? They're going, I want to know what your soil, your soil is like.
• 36:03
  Speaker B: Yes. And what, what you've done to this crop.
• 36:05
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. And, and they're our customer.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: I'm amazed at how very quickly the farmers will adapt to any new resource that seems helpful to them and how quickly they've adapted to this new environment of everybody wanting to know where and how something was grown or produced.
• 36:30
  Speaker A: Well, I think if there's a limit.
• 36:32
  Speaker B: At which it becomes not beneficial.
• 36:36
  Speaker A: Well, I think that that is the thing, is that if you are demanding a more valuable product, then you're gonna.
• 36:42
  Speaker B: Have to pay for it for that.
• 36:43
  Speaker A: Because the farmer is having to either maybe implement practices that might decrease yields. So what's going to make up for that now? I think that there's, you know, we've been doing some of this stuff long enough now that people are recognizing that, well, sometimes that yield goes back up, you know, but every situation is different, you know, and every year is different. And so it's not like anything else where you put it in one end of all the ingredients in one end of the factory and you get out the same product every single time. Well, that's the reason we love wine is because it depends on where it's grown and it depends on what the weather was like that year, what the wine's going to taste like. Well, I learned here on my podcast that it's the same with wheat, that wheat has a different taste and a different profile depending on where it's grown and what weather, what the weather was like.
• 37:33
  Speaker B: It's true of any crop, including cotton.
• 37:36
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 37:36
  Speaker B: You know, the fiber qualities are different in different growing areas.
• 37:40
  Speaker A: Right. And so it's just, I mean, it is, it's a complex situation. But I think what I want people to take away from is the fact that no, a lot of your tax dollars are not going to, to ensure that a farmer gets rich. No, a lot of your tax dollars are not going to buy them $1 million tractor, but across the rest of the world it is because they value the infrastructure of their agriculture more than we apparently do.
• 38:16
  Speaker B: I agree with everything you said and I. Obviously anyone listening to this is going to know that we have a built in bias here, both of us, but I also have an open mind and education and I have traveled and yes, talk to people around the world at this point. We have a unique and highly efficient, well, operating agricultural industry and we need to maintain it. And it has to be, it has to be a priority not just for the people who are farming, but for the people who consume what we're producing.
• 38:53
  Speaker A: Well. And I think it's, I think that the more we can educate people and the more that we can get them aware, you know, of, of exactly what it looks like, you know, like it's, it, there is a sense of that like the modern farmer is either, you know, still a homesteader or he is, you know, a huge wrecker of the environment. You know what I mean? Like I, and I don't think that they see that single farmer. They just think of that person as, or that it's a corporation, it's a corporate thing.
• 39:25
  Speaker B: Yes, I think that's, I think that's commonly true.
• 39:28
  Speaker A: And I think that started when years ago someone released the amount of subsidies that people have gotten on the Internet. They made that stuff public. And, and so you look on there and you see all these corporations, they.
• 39:41
  Speaker B: Don'T show the other side of that. What did that, what did they spend?
• 39:44
  Speaker A: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. When somebody's like, that guy's gotten a million dollars. And I'm like, but he spent two. Yeah, but he's. Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. And that's over the course of 30 years. You know what I mean? So, I mean, you know, over the course of 30 years, that's when you're taking out a million dollar loan every year, you know, like. Yeah, it's not. It just, it. It only shows part of the picture, for sure. And the other reason that it's all corporations is because they're businesses that they want a tax shelter just like anybody else does. Although I don't know many farmers that are paying taxes because they don't make.
• 40:20
  Speaker B: Any money to pay taxes. Well, I beg to differ there. I've paid a lot of taxes.
• 40:29
  Speaker A: Well, some years you don't have anything to pay for pay. I know. Sent a couple of people to company that does. Farmers can get. If you do any kind of research or anything, you can get tax credits for it. And so far, like, of the dozen or so people I've sent, I think one person is like, made enough money for it to be helpful at all.
• 40:48
  Speaker B: It's. It's definitely a risky business, but rewarding in a lot of ways. Certainly a part of our heritage. We don't want to give up.
• 40:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's. It is truly like one of the things that it's. It's vital to the existence of our country to be able to grow our own food. And the more people become engaged in that process, the better off we are, I think, the more aware they become. And, you know, when they meet their farmer and they find out, you know, what exactly, you know, their life is. And some, some people know how to make a lot of money and they do great, you know, and it wouldn't matter what business they're in, it would not have mattered, you know, but the majority of us are just, you know, normal Americans living and making an average or even below average income. Well, thanks, Delinda.
• 41:41
  Speaker B: Always good to talk to you.
• 41:42
  Speaker A: It was great. Thanks for talking over. Some stuff that I think will help people to understand and I appreciate what you do for us, and it's been great to connect with you as a tall alum. And now your husband, Thomas is in the current cohort.
• 41:59
  Speaker B: He is. He is in Modesto, Fresno, California.
• 42:03
  Speaker A: They're in California right now. I'm so jealous. I want to do it again.
• 42:07
  Speaker B: I would too. I think most alums would do it a second time or third.
• 42:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It was fabulous. Fabulous. Well, thanks. And thanks friends for listening into my conversation with Delinda Hicklin, Crop Insurance out of Ropesville, Texas. And if you ever need to get a hold of Delinda, we're going to leave all of the contact information for their business in the show notes. And we look forward to you joining us again for another episode of Conservation Stories.