EDITORIAL: Insurance Problems Hurt Farmers
The Daily Advertiser (excerpt)

Agriculture is vital to the Louisiana economy. The sugar industry alone contributes $750 million annually and provides jobs for 27,000 people in mills and refineries and on farms. The agriculture industry, however, is in trouble. It has been under siege since 1998, when an estimated 10 percent of farmers failed to survive a disastrous growing season. A year later, the state Department of Agriculture estimated that another 65 percent were still at risk financially. Then with yields still poor and prices down, came the 1999 drought, the worst in more than a century.

Problems continued in 2004. In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused further devastation.

Then came Gustav and Ike.

The most serious problem faced now, according to Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain, is insurance in which disaster provisions are "woefully inadequate."

Strain says if farmers had good, affordable crop insurance with reasonable coverage, disaster coverage would not be necessary.