美国国家公共电台 NPR As Climate Changes, Taxpayers Will Shoulder Larger U.S. Payouts To Farmers

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NOEL KING, HOST:

When a disaster hits U.S. farmers, like the floods this spring in the Midwest, taxpayers¹ end up paying part of the bill because of government-subsidized insurance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture now says as a result of climate change, the cost to taxpayers is likely to increase in the future.

NPR's Dan Charles has the story.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE²: Robert Henry is giving me a tour of the land where he'd love to be planting soybeans right now, near New Madrid, Mo.

ROBERT HENRY: Smells kind of raunchy, don't it?

CHARLES: It's a swamp.

HENRY: Yeah.

CHARLES: Oh, my goodness. Look at this.

It's water as far as I can see, covering this flood plain between the Mississippi River and the levees - land where Henry normally grows crops.

HENRY: Thousands and thousands of acres, and some of the best land in the world.

CHARLES: But he won't grow anything here this year. He even has a tractor and harvesting equipment still stranded³ on an island out in the middle of all that water. But here's the good news - he'll get a check from his crop insurance - not as much money as he'd have gotten from a soybean crop, but enough to help him get by.

HENRY: Which is better than going under, you know?

CHARLES: Most grain farmers buy crop insurance. It's a good deal for them. The federal government pays most of the cost of the premiums⁴. In fact, the federal government spends, on average, about $8 billion a year on crop insurance for farmers.

It could be a lot more this year. USDA officials expect to pay up to a billion dollars to farmers like Henry who couldn't plant their crops. Farmers who planted crops but get poor harvests will send their claims in later. Robert Henry is hoping that this year's flooding won't turn out to be a taste of the future.

HENRY: It may be global warming, but I don't think so. I think we're in a cycle of wet. And we'll cycle out of it, and we'll be dry again.

CHARLES: There are billions of dollars riding on whether he's right. The scientists, of course, say the climate is changing. And a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture just tried to figure out how it might affect these crop insurance payments.

Economist⁵ Andrew Crane-Droesch led the project.

ANDREW CRANE-DROESCH: We used five climate models, some of which are more optimistic and some of which are more pessimistic in terms of warming and precipitation change.

CHARLES: In general, these models show a future, 40 or 80 years from now, in which farmers harvest smaller amounts of the country's biggest crops - corn and soybeans.

CRANE-DROESCH: Reductions in yield almost across the entire country.

CHARLES: That sounds bad, and it probably is for anybody who needs corn and soybeans. But for farmers, the picture is different because that smaller harvest sells for a higher price.

CRANE-DROESCH: To the degree that climate change lowers production, it will increase the value because of basic supply and demand.

CHARLES: And the government has to pay bigger subsidies⁶ for crop insurance premiums. It's insuring something that's more valuable. Also, the models show more volatility⁷, more booms and busts⁸ - so more farmer claims, more government payouts for bad harvests.

Now, Crane-Droesch is quick to point out this is not really a prediction. The models don't include all kinds of other things, like how much of the corn and soybean crop gets exported.

CRANE-DROESCH: So there's just a lot of stuff that we can't capture. And that's why this work is only the beginning. There's a lot more to do on top of this.

CHARLES: His study is attracting attention, though, partly because the work may not continue - at least not right away or within the USDA. The USDA's Economic Research Service, which carried out this study, is getting relocated from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue says it'll save money and bring USDA operations closer to farmers.

Critics say it's an attack on independent research, carried out in such a rush that it's forcing employees to quit rather than uproot⁹ their lives. Most of the authors of this report on climate change and crop insurance either have left the agency already or are planning to.

Dan Charles, NPR News.

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