Crop Insurance Would Protect Farmer From Loss of Expenditures, April 8, 1923

Crop Insurance Is On Farm Block Bill for Next Congress. . . Committee Will Begin Hearings on the Suggestion Late This Month. . . Provide Method. . . Senator Smith Believes a Feasible Plan Can Easily be Worked Out. . . Want to Help Farmer. . . An Effort Will be Made to Insure Tillers of the Soil Against Loss of Production Expenditures

By the Associated Press

Washington, April 7—Crop insurance, under which the farmer will be able to recover a reasonable proportion of his planning and cultivating expenditures in the event of his failure to make an average yield is on the non-partisan farm bloc program for passage at the next session of congress, provided a satisfactory plan can be worked out,” Senator Smith, Democrat of South Carolina, said today.

A special sub-committee of the senate agriculture committee of which Senator McNary, Oregon, is chairman, and Senators Keyes, New Hampshire, and Smith, are members, decided today to begin hearings on crop insurance the last week in April.

“Our purpose,” Senator Smith said, “is to provide a method by which the government, at small cost to the farmer, can insure him substantially all that he has expended in his effort to make a crop when he experiences complete failure, and to reimburse him a proportion of his expenses when his production is not normal.

“The business man and substantially everyone else can obtain insurance in his business except the farmer. He now can insure his crops against storm damage, and can obtain insurance on his livestock, his home and his barn, but in his real business of making a crop he must gamble with weather, pest and everything else that means success or failure. If we can work out some plan, as I think we can, by which his investments in making a crop will not be a complete loss to him in case of crop failure or a partial loss when he has a crop shortage, we will go far toward stabilizing the farmer.

“In our country there is never a general crop failure, and for that reason I think a feasible basis for such insurance can be provided,’ the South Carolina senator continued. “The San Francisco earthquake and the Baltimore fire did not end life and fire insurance, and a crop failure in one section should not, in my judgment, make it impractical for the government to derive sufficient funds from premiums to carry on the business without any great drain upon the federal treasury.

“The farmer, barefooted and naked and alone without insurance on his real investment, his crops, must attempt to transact his affairs with others who are fully protected by insurance, although his risks are the greatest—the exigencies of the season.”

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From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, April 8, 1923