Crop Insurance On The Chopping Block?

Being new to the ways of farming, I have been doing some research on Crop Insurance, another issue that has been tied up with the Farm Bill and the House of Representatives plan that cuts $33 billion from food stamps.  Farm subsidies and insurance are used by nearly all farmers.  Its a way to protect against the bad years, ones that could wipe out some farms entirely.  It's a form of managing risk. 

In business school, I learned the best way to manage risk is to diversify.  We do it with our financial portfolios, why not on the farm?  This could be planting more different types of crops or varieties.  Maybe branching off into a related area, or adding business by doing more of the supply chain.  That's how responsible businesses with long term growth goals compete.  They don't look at what can make the most year to year, but what is sustainable in business.  I think typically, farmers try to stay with what they know will work, tending to avoid new things.  Diversification can occur on a small scale at first, and become larger as people become more comfortable with their new endeavor. 

On my farm, we have pigs, corn, soybeans, red wheat, and a little alfalfa. We also grind our own feed, have our own boar stud, fix our own machinery, and do all our own electrical work.  We also work with a sister company when times get though.  It's the way we manage to keep going even when things are hard.  I think in the future we may want to look at doing more work with organic farming, or instead of expanding, working to make our operations more efficient. 

Each business needs to be aware of how outside factors effect the farm commodity markets.  Just because corn prices are very high today, it doesn't mean they will stay there.  Everyone should keep a little in reserve to handle fluctuations in prices.  That in itself is an insurance policy.

Of course, not all risk can be diversified away, and insurance may be necessary.  While the government does provide insurance, it doesn't do anything to help with the deficit problems the United States is facing.  I know farmers often want to be independent, and see themselves as truly patriotic, contributing a lot of resources for the benefit of everyone else.  Having this mindset, how can we push to have a program where we become very dependent on the government?  Everyone is being forced to make cuts in programs, and shouldn't we look at some of ours, too?  The reason I would like to see crop insurance out of government, is that the government is very inefficient with money.  Sixteen cents of each dollar paid in goes right off the top for financing government actions, and another 13 cents goes towards debt interest.  It seems me me, that there must be a more mutually beneficial way to utilize an insurance program.

Back to the Food Stamps cuts, I do not think that Crop Insurance can possibly stay the same with so many cuts hitting the government budgets.  Even if we just clean up the Agriculture programs in order to make them function more smoothly and quickly, we are making improvements for everyone involved.