This winter has been a mountain of information and paperwork as people tried to understand how the current Farm Disaster Program might affect them.  It quickly became apparent that the current program was written for North Dakota.  There were special programs for very unique diseases and flooded farm land.  Last summer Texas had a severe drought so the demand for help increased.  In this part of Montana, most people would not qualify for any large payments.  The program did involve a leap in paper shuffling technology.  The past five years of Multi Peril Crop Insurance loss information was electronically downloaded to all of the local FSA offices nationwide.  This involved dozens of different kinds of crops and farming practices.  This amount of information could not have been handled timely with a normal paper routine.
The current disaster program uses a carrot and stick approach.  Farmers who had MPCI crop insurance and qualified for a disaster payment on their 1998 crop were paid more dollars than someone who did not have crop insurance.  To qualify for the multi-year disaster program, a farmer needed to have had MPCI those years.
The part of the program that provided everyone some benefit was the lowering of the premium cost for Multi Peril Crop Insurance for the 1999 crop year. Most farmers with a catastrophe (CAT) policy purchased a buy up policy.  This allowed their farm land to be divided into units and have loss claims paid at $3.30 a bushel instead of $1.82.  Other farmers who were already at the 65% level boosted their coverage to the 70% level.  Still other farmers opted for the crop revenue coverage (CRC) policy.  That policy guarantees a certain amount of income from the crop regardless of the market price of wheat.  Some farmers left their coverage at 65% and enjoyed the thought of having a lower premium than last year.  For the amount of coverage, Multi Peril Crop Insurance is lower priced this year than ever before.