After nearly a total loss of his potato crop last year, Steuben County farmer Mark Squires is hoping for a more successful season this year — and some changes to crop insurance.
On Aug. 9, 2024, Squires was prepared to harvest his crop of potatoes but when Tropical Storm Debby passed through and washed out the culverts and dikes, everything changed.
“In the morning at five o’clock, we had a beautiful crop but by that afternoon, everything was under about two feet of water,” Squires said.
He planted about 320 acres of potatoes but only harvested seven after this devastating loss. The potatoes rotted in the incredibly wet ground and were unusable.
“They do require you to try to harvest, it’s part of the [insurance] policy. So about a month later, after the flood, we tried to harvest some, but it wasn’t conducive to try, so at that point you can declare a complete loss,” Squires said.
Potatoes are a high-value crop that brings in more revenue per unit than commodity crops such as corn and soybeans. This impacts how farmers purchase their crop insurance.
“If you were to relate this to automobile insurance, there’s different levels of coverage. For a cheaper car, you would get the cheapest coverage because you could absorb that loss better than if it was an expensive car,” Squires said. “With our crops like potatoes and onions and other high-value crops, we buy an expensive policy, and it also covers us for added input costs.”
The difference between crop and car insurance is that when a person totals their car, it is a complete loss rather than trying to save certain pieces of the car. But that’s not how it works for crops, Squires said.
“With crop insurance, the adjuster comes out, looks at it and says, ‘Yes, it’s a total loss but there’s still some value.’ Basically, it would be like if you totaled your car and they said, ‘Well the seats are still good, so we’re going to deduct that off your total and then you could probably save the tires and rims so that would take some off too,’” he said.
The crop insurance barely covered half of what they would have made on their potato crop last year, Squires said.
“We still purchase it every year. It is an expense on the years you don’t need it, but it’s just a tool in the toolbox. You might only need it once every 10 years, but when you need it, it needs to be there and I don’t think we will ever shy away from it, but I wish there were some changes they could make,” he said.
In 2024, New York farmers lost $91 million from major disasters and severe weather, according to a market analysis from the American Farm Bureau. Excess precipitation, flooding and tropical storms accounted for $37 million in crop losses for New York.
The New York Farm Bureau has said improving crop insurance for specialty crop producers is a priority for the new federal farm bill, which has yet to be passed and still operates under standards set in 2018.
“We will continue to work for a modernized farm bill with our priorities intact to increase some of the safety net features of those programs, which, due to inflation the last few years, have not really kept up with what provides for a good safety net for farmers,” said President of the New York Farm Bureau David Fisher during a press conference in March.
The need for improved crop insurance may become more important as farmers struggle with changing weather patterns. Squires said he has noticed changes in weather patterns since his family began farming.
“They’re saying these 100-year storms, or 500-year storms, but we’ve gotten three in the last five years,” he said. “We’ve been getting a lot less frost earlier in the spring and our growing seasons, just the timing of them [have changed] from what I remember as a kid.”
With his fields still soaked, Squires said he is behind on planting.
“At this point, we won’t plant any more corn just because timing-wise, you plant it too late, it doesn’t get a chance to mature and then you get poor quality. We’re about two-thirds done with our potatoes. If we could get a good week of weather, we’d be done and everything would be growing,” he said.
Squires said he is grateful that the farm survived the loss last year after coming off a few good years of yields, but the feeling will stick with him forever.
“We’ve lost crops before whether it be onions or potatoes and sometimes it’s a poor-looking crop, you’ve been fighting it all year long and it’s just like take it away. But last year wasn’t one of those years. It was a gut punch and that’s going to live with me for a long, long time,” he said.