| ST. PAUL - Frank Johnson and Chuck Kanten
reminisced about four decades in farming, but could not recall
devastation like what brought more than 400 western Minnesota
farmers to the state Capitol on Tuesday.
"Nothing to the degree of
this," said Kanten, whose family farms in the Milan area,
west of Willmar.
There were frosts in 1984 and 1995 that
damaged their sugar beet crops, Johnson said, but the Hector
farmer added nothing matched the 2000 freeze that ruined 1.8
million tons of beets. The freeze cost members of Renville's
Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative $65 million, and the
federal crop insurance program refuses to pay farmers for damages.
The two said they have seen minor
brush-ups with insurance companies, but never such a big problem.
That's what brought two busloads and many
individual carloads of farmers to the state Capitol complex.
Attorney General Mike Hatch stood in the middle of a committee
room - with 100 people more than its legal capacity - asking
farmers question after question as he tried to build a case
against the insurers.
Hatch and Commerce Commissioner Jim
Bernstein are working together. Bernstein's agency regulates
insurance companies, and he said once he gets enough facts, he
will try to convince insurers to pay farmers.
The attorney general said he needs the
facts to decide whether insurance companies broke state laws in
denying claims. If so, he said he would take them to court.
The beet cooperative already has filed
suits in four western Minnesota counties and is considering
federal action.
The controversy comes from the 2000
harvest, when up to six nights of hard freezes damaged crops in
southwest and west central Minnesota. However, farmers say they
did not know the extent of the damage until after beets were
delivered to the co-op's processing plant.
Officials of the crop insurance program
say once farmers delivered their beets, insurers were off the
hook.
Most of the damage was on co-op member
farms, but Hatch said other farmers who experienced damage last
year and whose claims were not paid may contact his office.
One question Hatch said needs to be
resolved is if state law applies to federal crop insurance. If
not, he will have difficulties getting involved in the case.
Insurance companies said farmers missed
their deadlines for filing claims; farmers say they did not know
that the sugar beets were worthless until after the deadlines.
"These deadlines are phony,"
Hatch said. "They are not paying because of the size of the
claim."
Hatch discovered that many farmers have
been paid in the past after missing deadlines.
"What we're trying to show is they
are picking and choosing," the attorney general said.
Hatch and Bernstein said they probably
cannot take action until January, at the earliest, because it will
take time to compile information they are seeking from farmers.
In the meantime, farmers are hurting
financially, Johnson and Kanten said.
"We clearly have lost some"
farmers to the situation, Kanten said.
"The frightening thing is the
farmers keep it to themselves," he added.
As a volunteer for the Lutheran church,
Kanten said he worked with farmers during the financial crisis of
the 1980s and saw the psychological toll firsthand.
In the area affected, Kanten and Johnson
said, the 2000 sugar beet disaster is worse than the 1980s. |