Poll

[freewheat]

I am another guy glad they gutted it. We
need some reality in the industry. And
yes, if you expand, your reference
margin is immediately adjusted higher,
proportionate to the expansion, so you
are covered for much higher margins, and
can therefore go out and rent land just
cuz you can...

Crop insurance has finally become a good
program. Agri-invest is kinda neat,
though it was better when it was 3% of
sales.

The guys who like Crop insurance are the
ones who have stuck with it. I probably
wouldn't like it either without the 50%
experience discount, and having to use
the deplorable area average yields.

My advice for guys who want some kind of
coverage, would be to get in crop
insurance, it is the one plan that
probably won't be gutted. As time goes
on and you prove yourself, your coverage
increases, and your premiums go down.

I took 50% coverage for years. It was a
cheap way to be kind of covered, and
build my own yield history vs the
pathetic area averages. Now my coverage
is pretty darn good, and quite cheap
too.

I am a free market guy all the way. A
person should run their farm based on
what THEY THEMSELVES can produce, not on
ad hoc programs that never seem to work
consistently.

Some of the guys with the biggest
payouts, are the same guys who buy new
iron all the dang time, rent land for no
other reason but to say they are the
biggest, and whine and complain that a
program gets stripped down.

We need to do it on our own, guys.
Really. We have been through some nasty
years as I have said before. What one
does then, is make do. You don't buy
iron, you buckle down in household
items. The new 60 inch tv can wait for
better times.

Personal responsibilty. No one should be
guaranteed by government, a guaranteed
support for business decisions that are
iffy. I survived the tough years by
being frugal, not by government payouts.
If you can't be frugal, but need a new
half ton every other year, GET A GRIP
ALREADY! If you just have to have an
S690 combine or whatever the heck they
are, why should you get a handout when
you could use a 10 year old machine
instead?

Society is a shambles, people are
spoiled like never before. It really is
unbelievable to me.

[RidgeRunner]

mbratrub hit the nail on the head. I think the gov't was looking at two things....what this would potentially cost them in a crop/price failure, and how do we slow down the increase in farm debt. Might(will)get lambasted for saying this but with 85% income protection, risk tolerence goes up, opening the door for these unrealistic land rents and sales. I know in my situation, I have been blessed with some good years, and had a mother of a margin built up. Is it right that Jane and John taxpayer are on the hook to subsidize my farm after one bad year? Actually the gov't should have went one step further and eliminated it, as in it's form now, is more or less useless. I think anyone with a calculator can figure out that 80-120 ac rent, or 3000/ac land does not pencil with normal yields and normal prices. Agristability in my opinion was a no-lose situation that was partly to blame for this ag bubble that has been created. That and our financial lenders, which have been like rope salesmen in a prison. Obviously not everyone fits this example so forgive me if I offended anyone. I think a well funded crop insurance program should be the extent of gov't support.
As my dad always said, "if you want to bet big, you should be able to lose big.." and I think agristabilty to a degree did not allow that.

Remember...this is IMO.

[SASKFARMER3]

Keep some grain over and a good crop insurance
program and keep the agri invest. The other
program was good for shit!

[ajl]

I agree with Freewheat and Ridge and am glad to see Agristability gutted.
I would have eliminated entirely myself but what would the bureaucrats
do?

[freewheat]

So sick of my two words per line. How does
one fix it? Or is it only for a select
few? lol

[Burbert]

Why da ya think, I always end my comments
with, fharperenritz, eh??????? Stupid
Comedian framers duped agin, comedian gag
at its best, going backwards 2.......

[farmaholic]

With a structural change, doesn't everything just rise or
decrease incrementally, if you expanded by 25%, doesn't your
reference margin and trigger point? Maybe it was only the
"Shifty" that used it unscrupulously, I don't farm for program
payments. I agree that you would be covered for the extra
acres but your reference margin(per acre) would be
relative(same as before). If things were done by the book I
don't see the advantage of expanding farm size just for extra
coverage, your margin doesn't increase per acre, just total
margin. Am I missing something?

The old program was no screaming hell either. For easy
figuring say your reference margin was 100,000 and you had a
total wipeout, with the different tiers and percentages the
total payout would be about 66,500. Total coverage is 66.5%!
As I said in the beginning top two tier wipeout in essence is
only 35%.

You're right, time to move on. Thanks everyone who contributed
and there were some good points made... Good discussion.

Freewheat: enlarge your text box by dragging the bottom right
hand corner, (not sure about smartphones though).
Machinery(amortization) isn't an eligible expense so doesn't
have a direct bearing on agstability.

Thanks everyone....

[farmaholic]

There he is.....

[freewheat]

Farmaholic, machinery is not directly related as an ineligible expense,
but IMO, it is still related in the whole scheme of things. Guys with
great margins, and who therefore had a half decent guarantee, could buy
stuff they did not always NEED, because they had a tangible guarantee.
Those of us with poor margins due to weather, had no such cushion. It
was pure luck of the draw, not management, and this is what gets my
goat at times. I had two inches of fast rain in 2011, that my neighbor
half a mile away did not get. Guess who got finished seeding? lol! My
land was unseeded, his was, and his crops did well. Why should blind
luck enable some over others??? Farmers with a string of luck had
enviable margins, those with 4 years in 6 unseeded due to too wet, and
no grain to sell at high prices had crappy margins.

What I mean by the expanding farm issue, is that it made it risk free
for those with good margins. You could not really lose a thing, and so
expansion was untempered IMO, and we as farmers should take
responsibility for our actions, not taxpayers. Expanding not of
necessity, sometimes drives me crazy: but to have the taxpayer
subsidize this, is IMO absolutely nuts. But I admit, they had to do
something regarding reference margins for expanding farms. It was a
conundrum.

The longer I live, the more I want freedom.

Hope my text is proper now, never noticed that drag button before, how
dumb is that??? lol.

[charliep]

freewheat

The shorter lines seem to go out on tablets, cell phones and strangely enough, apple computers. Much easier to read the short lines on a cell phone versus the extended ones. Short lines used to bug me as well but actually a benefit.