Crop Insurance Keeps Me in Business

That's a paraphrase of a farm organization leader from the upper Midwest from today's Farm Policy. It's an opportunity to point out the difference between keeping farmers in business and keeping farms in business. If disaster strikes or prices drop, farmers may leave the land, either retiring or finding other occupations.  But the likelihood is the land they were farming is likely to continue to be farmed. Sometimes the crop will change; tobacco farmers who lost their program may switch to other crops while other farmers may use their acreage to get into tobacco.  And in marginal areas, like the valleys of upstate New York may see the small and mid-sized dairy farms go out of business, with much of the acreage reverting to forest.