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The Risk Management Agency last week only partly solved problems
involving full crop insurance payments for sugar beets infected with
root rot, officials say.
"For farmers who had root rot and dug those fields up and
there was no check strip, there is where we're having a
problem," says Mark Weber, executive director of the Red River
Valley Sugar Beet Growers Association.
"We expect farmers will be paid 100 percent of their crop
insurance guarantee for those fields that had greater than 50
percent root rot and left a check strip, now that the preharvest has
started," Weber says. "For farmers who didn't leave a
check strip, we have a problem. The insurance agencies didn't tell
farmers to leave a check strip."
Weber says he should know by Sept. 5 how many acres there are in
both categories, or and how many dollars are at stake in the region.
The association will push for administrative lenience this year
because of the confusion between the RMA and insurance industry.
Another options is arbitrate their claims, perhaps through the
association, or perhaps lawsuits.
Some American Crystal Sugar Co. growers in Clay and Norman
counties in Minnesota and elsewhere were stunned in August to learn
that beets Crystal rejected because of high root rot damage would
receive only a partial payment from crop insurance.
Meanwhile, some other farmers earlier had been promised or given
full payment and had immediately plowed down their beets.
RMA Administrator Kenneth Ackerman in Washington recently issued
an advisory that allows full payment on damage of 50 percent or
more. It requires that beets rejected by a processor before the
earliest delivery (preharvest) date be appraised by the insurance
provider.
If the farmer agrees with the appraisal, the beets are destroyed
and the farmer is paid immediately. If the farmer disagrees, the
farmer will "maintain representative samples" or continue
to care for the crop, with the ultimate payment "based on the
harvested production or appraisals from the samples at the time
harvest should have occurred."
"The value of the sugar beets in the representative samples
or damaged acreage not meeting the minimum acceptable standards
contained in the sugar beet processor contract can be determined for
appraisals after the earliest date the processors will accept
production from any producer,"Ackerman wrote.
Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., who had pursued the matter on behalf
of North Dakota farmers, calls the RMA decision "the only fair
and equitable" outcome. "This should not have been a
difficult call for the RMA," Pomeroy says.
Pomeroy was on the road in North Dakota and acknowledges hasn't
been briefed on the check strip complication.
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