Editor's note: This editorial was originally published on Nov. 20, 2023.

Farmers are more directly reliant on — or at the mercy of — the vagaries of the weather than perhaps any other component in the Midwest economy. (However, many of those components rely on a strong farm economy to thrive.) Thus, farmers are on the front line of climate change and the impact it has on our lives.

A South Dakota News Watch story in a recent edition of the Press & Dakotan reported that this is becoming an increasingly expensive proposition.

Since 2001, South Dakota farmers have received $8.3 billion in payments from the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. “specifically due to weather disasters rising significantly during that time,” News Watch said. In fact, South Dakota was among the top states in the nation in receiving such payments due to weather disasters such as floods and drought.

According to environmentalists, this reflects the rising economic toll of climate change.

U.S. farmers received a record $19.1 billion in crop insurance payments in 2022, well above the $3 billion paid out in 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

(Also, EWG estimates that about one-third of crop insurance payments goes to “dozen or so big insurance companies and their agents that sell policies and not to farmers who work the land and absorb the risk,” News Watch reported.)

This cost is generally supported by U.S. taxpayers, with “nearly 65% of the premiums for the crop insurance program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture … subsidized with federal funding,” News Watch noted.

Could that level of support change?

With a new Farm Bill under consideration, some critics of the current structure believe that less federal funding should be devoted to this effort. They say that lessening that support would compel more farmers to alter their operations in coping with the long-term impact of climate change. With the current safety net, critics imply, farmers may have little incentive to do so.

That argument may make sense to a degree, but it also points to a conundrum.

Without question, the impact of climate change is challenging farmers, so reducing the amount of federal backing of crop insurance may ultimately undercut the nation’s ability to feed itself.

“It’s so vitally important for the ability of farmers and ranchers to manage their risk,” said South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation president Scott VanderWal. “When you’re so totally depending on the weather for your livelihood, you have to be able to manage that risk.”

In this discussion, “risk” is the operative word, because that’s what farmers are facing increasingly as the weather becomes less predictable — when a flood year is followed by a drought year, when farmland that was once reliably productive becomes a gamble year after year.

If farmers don’t adjust to changing climate patterns, they become increasingly reliant on insurance payments unless they change. But what significant adjustments can be made when the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable and prone to dramatic outbursts?

Thus, risk is becoming an even greater variable, and that unpredictable variability is a big reason for rising crop insurance payments.

Any action lawmakers consider with these payments must also factor in the heightened risk and variability that comes as climate change increases. Balance is vital, although it may be stubbornly elusive.

Ultimately, crop insurance is “the investment the American public is making to ensure that the industry that raises our food, fiber and fuel remains viable and strong so we don’t find ourselves depending on other countries for our food like we do for energy a lot of the time,” VanderWal said. “… Because we can feed ourselves, we don’t have to worry about getting our food from other countries. That’s so incredibly important and part of our national security.”