Crop Insurance Today May 2015 - 1

TODAY PRESIDENT'SMESSAGE

"Leg Godt,"or as

the Danes would say,

"Play Well"

Laurie Langstraat, Editor
TODAY® IS PROVIDED AS A SERVICE OF
NATIONAL CROP INSURANCE SERVICES®
TO EDUCATE READERS ABOUT THE RISK
MANAGEMENT TOOLS PRODUCERS USE
TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM
THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH
PRODUCTION AGRICULTURE.
TODAY is published quarterly-February, May,
August, and November by

National Crop Insurance Services
8900 Indian Creek Parkway, Suite 600
Overland Park, Kansas 66210
www.ag-risk.org
If you move, or if your address is incorrect, please
send old address label clipped from recent issue
along with your new or corrected address to
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(Legos and Crop Insurance)
In the February 25, 2015, New York Times
daily briefing, there was a short piece about the
Legos toy company. According to the article, Legos
experienced a 13 percent increase in revenue and 15
percent increase in net profit for 2014. Legos now
rival both Mattel and Fisher Price toy companies.
Not too shabby. The article went on a bit further to
provide an abbreviated history of the Legos enterprise.
The Legos company name is actually an abbreviation of the Danish words "leg godt" meaning "play
well." Legos started out in Denmark in 1932 building
wooden toys by a carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen.
The new, ubiquitous plastic interlocking toy bricks
came later. Legos have been used to construct a minTom Zacharias, NCIS President
iature Brooklyn Bridge as well as a full-scale model
of the Star Wars X-Wing Fighter. (How cool is that?)
Hmmmmmm... lots of critical interlocking pieces and playing well. Anything we can glean
from this?

Lots of Interlocking Pieces and Playing Well

NCIS® EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Tim Weber, Chairman
Mike Day, Vice Chairman
Jim Korin, Second Vice Chairman
NCIS® MANAGEMENT
Thomas P. Zacharias, President
Charles Lee, General Counsel
James M. Crist, CFO/COO
Sherri Scharff, Executive
Vice President and Chief of Staff
Troy Brady, Senior Vice President
Frank Schnapp, Senior Vice President
Mike Sieben, Senior Vice President
Creative Layout and Design
by Graphic Arts of Topeka, Inc., Kansas
Printed on recycled paper.

The crop insurance industry is a highly interconnected and sophisticated risk management
system for today's modern farmer. Historically, hail coverage to growing crops has been available in the United States since the late 1800s. As we have written in this publication on more
than one occasion, the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938 first introduced crop insurance on
a wide-scale basis to protect farmers from disasters out of their control. After more than 75
years and the introduction of the private-sector and additional crops and liability protected, we
can fast forward to the 2014 Farm Bill where crop insurance is now the centerpiece of the farm
safety net.
Today's crop insurance system is characterized as a public-private partnership. Included in
that partnership is the USDA's Risk Management Agency representing more than 450 employees and the private sector delivery system, represented by approximately 20,000 individuals,
primarily state-licensed crop insurance agents, but also including more than 5,000 professionally certified loss adjustment specialists. Both RMA/ USDA employees, and their private sector
counterparts, are responsible for delivering the most comprehensive crop insurance system in
the world.
In terms of participation, in 2014 there were 295 million acres insured, representing approximately $110 billion in liability and 90 percent of insurable acres. Including Federally-reinsured
and state-regulated Crop-Hail coverage, the liability of the U.S. crop insurance industry was
approximately $150 billion of crop insurance protection for U.S. farmers.
For the Federally reinsured book of business, more than 80 percent of insured acres had
Printed with Environmentally
friendly vegetable oil based inks.

Continued on page 28

CROPINSURANCE TODAY®

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Crop Insurance Today May 2015

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