Small farmers hit by extreme weather could get assistance from proposed insurance program

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The bill aims to create an insurance program for small produce farms facing losses from increasingly extreme weather in the Northeast and other parts of the country. “Unfortunately, with all the various insurance programs that are there to back up our farmers we really don't have an insurance program that will help our small vegetable farmers,” Welch said. The current crop insurance program is inadequate because farmers have to identify how much of a crop was a particular vegetable and potentially only get the wholesale value but farms like Bear Roots Farm sell their produce retail, he said. “There’s nobody who’s unaffected, whether you’re a perennial grape or apple grower, a dairy farmer trying to cut forage when it’s raining every other day all summer, or a vegetable farmer that might have been under four feet of water," said Justin Rich, president of the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association, and a produce farmer in Huntington.