Crop Insurance Today August 2016 - 1

TODAY PRESIDENT'SMESSAGE Zen Crop Laurie Langstraat, Editor TODAY® IS PROVIDED AS A SERVICE OF NATIONAL CROP INSURANCE SERVICES® TO EDUCATE READERS ABOUT THE RISK MANAGEMENT TOOLS PRODUCERS USE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH PRODUCTION AGRICULTURE. TODAY is published quarterly-February, May, August, and November by National Crop Insurance Services 8900 Indian Creek Parkway, Suite 600 Overland Park, Kansas 66210 www.ag-risk.org If you move, or if your address is incorrect, please send old address label clipped from recent issue along with your new or corrected address to Donna Bryan, at the above address. NCIS® EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Mike Day, Chairman Jim Korin, Vice Chairman Kendall Jones, Second Vice Chairman NCIS® MANAGEMENT Thomas P. Zacharias, President Charles Lee, General Counsel James M. Crist, CFO/COO Sherri Scharff, Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff Troy Brady, Senior Vice President Frank Schnapp, Senior Vice President Creative Layout and Design by Graphic Arts of Topeka, Inc., Kansas Printed on recycled paper. Insurance This title will no doubt catch the attention of most readers. My attachment and association to "Zen" is quite pedestrian actually. Several years ago, it was recommended to me that I pick up a copy of Zen Golf by Joseph Parent. I was advised that it would help my mental game. In all honesty, I probably hack it around about the same as I always have, but I break fewer clubs (anger management) and hopefully I put life and crop insurance in a much better perspective. At a minimum, I would like to believe that I deal with failure and self-induced unforced errors much better. Okay, enough about me. "Please proceed to the highlighted route." In one sense, Zen can be considered a process of Tom Zacharias, NCIS President enlightenment through self-awareness and self-restraint in the hopes of achieving the betterment of ourselves and others. I believe it is safe to say that both farming and crop insurance are service-oriented professions that through the pursuit of betterment of the individual, others benefit as well. The modern U.S. farmer seeking to make a living grows food and fiber well beyond the needs of his or her own family or local community. The capability of the U.S. farmer to provide food and fiber for so many is an incredible story of both public investment and private-sector initiative that has no parallel here in the U.S. or globally. Crop insurance plays a supporting role in agriculture. The role of crop insurance is to provide financial stability to the farm economy. It too is characterized by a collective benefit. The "risk pool" of insureds contribute premium over time such that there are adequate reserves to pay indemnities in the event of an insured loss at the local level or a catastrophic agricultural disaster such as the drought of 2012. One crop insurance agent services many farmers just as one crop adjuster services multiple claims in a loss situation. The public-private partnership of the modern U.S. crop insurance system is characterized by cost sharing between taxpayers, farmers, and the insurance and reinsurance industry. The "Zen" of it is the improvement of the system over time and how both the private and public sectors, by working together effectively, can provide support to the farm and rural economy. "The Signal & the Noise" Nate Silver's enlightening and entertaining book The Signal and the Noise is a good vehicle to further motivate this discussion. At least one takeaway from Silver's treatise is that we are inundated with a great deal of information from multiple media outlets. At issue is our ability and capability to discern the difference between what is simply "noise" and what is the "signal." For virtually all of us in our industry, our day begins and ends with some form of clipping service alert containing a multitude of reports, news stories, and tweets about crop insurance Printed with Environmentally friendly vegetable oil based inks. Continued on page 32 CROPINSURANCE TODAY® 1 http://www.ag-risk.org http://www.ag-risk.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crop Insurance Today August 2016