Insurance offers two solutions for three challenges

Marion Wilson sees three challenges to surviving in farming.
He knows he can only do something about two of them.
“We must constantly adapt to new technology, and use high levels of crop insurance protection, but there is not much we can do about the weather,” said Wilson, 35, who farms 1,300 acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat in northern Queen Anne’s County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Wilson said he sees new technology coming out just about every six months.
Now he uses GPS auto-steer and yield mapping.
“This year we had to put a reel on our combine, which we have never had to do before to get the crop out,” he said. “Obviously there wasn’t a lot of crop out there but we had to go as low as we could to pick it off the ground.”
This year Wilson saw 85 days go by with less than 1/100 of an inch of rain.
On his dry land corn he harvested between 50 and 60 bushels.
Even on his irrigated acres, he figures he left 30 to 50 bushels on the ground.
“The irrigated corn was looking good until the hurricanes came through and flattened it.”
This is one of those “thank God for crop insurance years,” he added.
For Wilson, crop insurance is a given. It is just a part of his production cost.
He carries 75 percent coverage on corn, soybeans, and wheat and he is considering going higher.
“I forward-price a higher percentage of my expected yield because I have higher crop insurance protection,” he said. “And being a young farmer, I can’t afford to increase my debt load.
“Without crop insurance, it might take me 10 years to recover from a year like this one.”
Wilson says farming seems more of a challenge every year.
“Trying to nail down our overhead costs and then figuring out the grain market — which has been extremely volatile — is important because if we don’t know what it costs to put in a crop, we won’t know how much to sell that crop for to make a profit,” Wilson said. “And obviously, that is what we are here for.”
As for the future of agriculture, Wilson said he sees new nutrient management requirements coming and that he believes they will be a special challenge for Maryland farmers.
He also is certain that high levels of crop insurance coverage will become a way of life for every farmer who wants to stay in business.
And he thinks technological change will come faster and faster and be hard to keep up with.
“But, hey, I’m in this for the same reason every farmer farms, we love it, it’s our way of life, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.