Wet spring pushes crop insurance deadlines

Farmers are days away from cut-off dates to purchase crop insurance. This cold and wet spring has kept tractors parked, pushing up against federal crop insurance deadlines.

If crops are planted after those deadlines, growers face one percent daily reductions on their coverage.

“I had several customers in and tell me, ‘I hate to say this, but I wish it would stop raining,’” said Alan Yirak, seed manager for Co-Ag at Rosalia.

More than 17 inches of rain has fallen on the Palouse this year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Statistics Service field office at Olympia. That total is 1.42 inches above the year-to-date average.

Along with the rain has come as cold a spring as has ever been recorded. The National Weather Service thermometer at the Pullman-Moscow Airport hit 60 degrees Saturday, the first time it had done so all year.

The April 23 date was the latest date temperatures topped 60 degrees in recorded history.

Growers west of Highway 195 and south of Highway 23 must have their spring wheat planted by Saturday, April 30, to meet a crop insurance deadline.

“It’s been pretty hectic in here,” said a worker at the PNW Farmers Cooperative seed plant at Steptoe. “Guys running this far behind are scrambling every time the sun shines.”

Those on the other sides of the highways are a little less hurried. They have until May 15 to get wheat in the ground.

“You guys down there are in worse shape than we are as far as the crop insurance deadline,” said Yirak. “We do have some guys that are switching from wheat to barley, but as of right now it’s been very few of them.”

Farmers countywide have until May 20 to plant lentils, peas, chickpeas or barley and still purchase a full insurance plan, according to Kathy Wolfe, county director for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

Farmers still have two options if they can’t get wheat in the ground by the insurance deadline. They have 25 days to plant and purchase insurance at reduced coverage, or they could idle their ground for the year and file for a prevented planting claim, which would guarantee 60 percent of the revenue they might have taken from the fields.