The day began with another one of those business meetings. Entering it, I was scared I would be lost in the technical terms, but I came out surprised and full of knowledge about crop insurance. Renae Zoske spoke with us today, keeping in mind we were not business people. I thought she did a very good job of explaining everything with ease. I now know that if I were to have crops, my insurance would cover 65-85% of my yield and revenue loss, and hail, wind, or other insurance can cover the rest. Many farmers do use the insurance system as a way to manage their risk. Renae said that up to 90% of farm land in America is covered by insurance, which proves the system we have now is working. What she does not want to happen is farmers to self insure or changes to occur in the amount of money put into the crop insurance subsidy. Either of these changes could come about if the Obama Administration’s desire to lower the crop insurance subsidy in 2015 materializes, but Renee is hoping that things do not change too much. The system is complex already and involves 10 years of past yields going into the calculations of the amount of insurance they will receive. One bad year can really hurt a farmer because it will stay with them for 10 years. There are hundreds of acronyms that go into crop insurance and changing what farmers are used to and understand, especially with cutting the funds that go to them will negatively effect farming as a whole.

The next place we went was Seed Savers Exchange, which was really cool! It started with a couple who wanted to save the seeds that were important to their family. They wrote into a popular magazine and found others who were interested in saving seeds as well. Once all these seeds began to gather in their home they realized they needed a farm and more space. They moved to Iowa and began what is now Seed Savers Exchange which employs over 60 persons and has grown in size over the past forty years. It was so fascinating how many seeds they have collected over the years, keeping some from extinction. They now sell some of the seeds to the public and are working on mass producing others so they can expand even more. It was an awesome place, and I love what they are doing there to preserve seeds for the next generation.

The last thing we did was watch a movie on the importance of preserving the natural soil and not polluting it with chemicals. It was called My Father’s Garden and was focused on treating the land with respect and working with it, rather than against it by covering it in chemicals. One person in it had a large-scale organic farm and that is something we haven’t really seen. All the organic farms we have been to have been small, CSA farms and it was neat to see how organic can be done on such a large scale. I agree that we need to take care of our soil, so it can take care of us.