Crop Insurance

Two days before Republican Nominee Landon was to deliver his bid for the farm vote at Des Moines last September, Democratic Nominee Roosevelt made headlines by announcing that he had appointed a committee headed by Secretary of Agriculture Wallace to work out a plan of crop insurance. Up from Topeka rose realistic howls of pain and rage as Landon handlers claimed the President was stealing their man's stuff. Snatching it from his forthcoming speech, they rushed the Landon crop insurance program to the press: "I believe that the question of crop insurance should be given the fullest attention" (TIME, Oct. 5).

Last week, on the heels of a message urging a long-range program to abate the evils of farm tenancy, President Roosevelt sent his crop insurance committee's report to Congress with a temperate letter of recommendation. This newest New Deal plan to make life richer and safer for farmers differed from previous ones in that it was not to be launched on an imperial scale. Its authors proposed to begin with the 1938 wheat crop only, wait on time and experience before extending it to other staples.

The plan was as simple in theory as it is certain to be complex in operation. In good years, the farmer pays a portion of his crop as an insurance premium, and the Government stores the premiums away. In years of drought, flood, hail or insect plague, the Government draws on its reserve to compensate the farmer for his crop losses. Thus the farmer is insured against financial disaster, the nation is insured against hunger, and both are insured against the price dips and soars of alternating surplus and scarcity.

Lest shiftlessness be encouraged, it was proposed that only 75% of each farmer's crop be insured. Individual premiums would be based on average yield, be assessed by a local committee. The farmer could pay several years' premiums out of one bumper crop, might pay and be paid in cash if he chose. But there would be no insurance against price drops. The committee thought a $100,000,000 appropriation would be enough to get the system going, with the Government (i.e., the general taxpayer) bearing administrative costs. Lest this seem a new and greater bounty to farmers, the committee pointed out that in the past ten years, exclusive of AAA benefits, the Government has paid $615,937,000 to stricken farmers in the shape of Relief, feed loans, seed loans. Crop insurance would be voluntary, and so far farmers have shown no great enthusiasm for it. But Secretary Wallace has long waxed enthusiastic about the "ever-normal granary" or "Joseph" plan for which it is a starter, so John Farmer is likely to get it whether he wants it or not.

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