Win If You Win, Win If You Lose.

       I've talked about Farm Subsidies before, but this is about crop insurance. Now, I think crop insurance is a smart idea. It requires that farmers pay a premium for loss of crops because of weather. Then if they do lose their crops, they get paid by the insurance for the loss instead of experiencing catastrophic loss and the government stepping in after the fact like after hurricanes. This all sounds good, right? And it is, as far as it goes.
       The problem, though, and you know there's always a problem, is that when they get paid for their loss, farmers get repaid by the government, in other words taxpayers. But after all, food is too important to overlook. The thing is, however, that even if a farmer is in an area where they know they're going to be in a  severe drought, as long as he plants the seeds, he's gonna get paid by the insurance. So as far as the farmer is concerned, and the seed company, the insurance is a great deal.
       There's another kicker though. If the farmer plants his seeds, knowing they will die, he still gets paid, but he gets paid at the inflated price those crops would get  during the drought because of scarcity. So he gets a higher price, because if somehow he had been able to sell real product during the drought, he'd have reaped a larger than usual profit. This makes the farmer hope for dry years, or early frost to kill the crop. So farmers can actually make more if they lose their crop than if they harvest a good crop.
       I don't think that's what Congress had in mind when they passed the law. At least I hope Congress didn't have that in mind. Although given that a number of Congressmen own "working" farms, you never know. Now, if you don't believe in climate change, it's no big deal to you, but for the rest of the country, we could wind up paying these farmers and seed companies way too much money for doing pretty much nothing. I can see smart entrepreneurs buying fallow land in drought stricken areas and planting whatever seeds are most likely to fail as an investment.
       I guess the thing Congress should do is limit the consecutive years of drought it will pay for. Then stop the loophole that would allow phony farmers from taking part. Of course that's asking a lot of a Congress that has trouble agreeing on what day it is.