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Taking all the goodie off the top
By Rick Snell
Barton County Extension Agent
Kansas
Luckily we were gone to a wedding in Ellsworth or we may have had our vehicle banged up by the recent hail. If you were fortunate enough to miss the recent hail, count your blessings. The hail hit some of our better Wheat in the county and so it took a little of the "goodie" off the top.
Personally, I am not fond of hail even though I have collected a little insurance money over the years. I do think the general hail belt has moved more into our area so either you should take out hail insurance every year or set aside your insurance premium you would have paid and set that aside as an emergency fund. OK, so I'm quoting Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, but it does make sense.
The worst of the hail hit right in the Odin area and to the east of Ellinwood. In the town of Ellinwood, there was vehicle and roof damage as well as a lot of leaves and twigs knocked down. This wasn't quite like the hail that Hoisington had a few years ago, although I guess I did hear of a few broken windows.
I did not see a lot of damage on crops other than wheat. That's mostly because it has been so dry that the second cutting of alfalfa hasn't come back and the dryland row crops are small due to lack of moisture.
In the worst areas it was about 75 percent damaged when you consider the loss from heads broken off and lying on the ground, heads that were still attached but will be too low for the combine to pickup and all the shattered grain knocked out of the head. When it gets to a certain percent they just zero it out because it cost you $15 per acre just to cut it and then another 15 cents to haul it to town. So there was some Wheat zeroed out due to hail, but as you got to the fringe areas it was only one percent loss or so.
Those with hail insurance plus CRC (Crop Revenue Coverage) or RA (Revenue Assurance) should come out smelling like a rose. Those with only the basic Multi-Peril insurance as I said earlier, will suffer.
It's usually just those few extra bushels that are the profit. This year the drought took off the profit and so any further loss means you lost money unless the insurance saves your hide. In most cases, with crop insurance you usually make just enough yield that you can't collect. Then by the time you give a third to the landowner or pay your land taxes and pay the lender your interest costs, there isn't much left. Then consider your cash input costs on the crop, as well as machinery repairs and replacement, and you've lost money. In most cases, in our area you need at least $100 of gross revenue to breakeven and in some cases $120 if your debt load is higher. Then if you do any summer fallow, you have to consider the years when you have weed control and ownership costs without revenue.
On the other hand, if your Wheat was poor to begin with, you may have been praying for hail. Unfortunately, your prayers were answered only it happened about 15 to 20 miles too far east.
Date: 6/24/04
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