Latest news with #Pottinger
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
As temperatures rise, the US Corn Belt could see insurance claims soar
In the United States, farmers have access to federally subsidized crop insurance — a backstop that affords them some peace of mind in the face of extreme weather. When droughts, floods, or other natural disasters ruin a season's harvest, farmers can rely on insurance policies that will pay out a certain percentage of the expected market value of the food, saving them from financial ruin. But that insurance program could become strained as global warming worsens, bringing more uncertainty to the agricultural sector. A new study models how harvests in the U.S. Corn Belt — the swath of Midwestern states including Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa that produce the vast majority of the nation's corn — could fluctuate over the next few decades under a warming scenario projected by United Nations climate scientists. The researchers compared these results to a scenario with no warming, in which tomorrow's growing conditions are the same as today's. They found that, as temperatures continue to rise, the nation's corn growers are likely to see more years with lower yields — and the losses they incur during those years will also be greater. The study projects that the likelihood of corn growers' yields falling low enough to trigger insurance payouts could double by 2050, creating financial strain for both farmers and the government. The findings demonstrate how growing climate impacts like unprecedented heat could destabilize the business of growing food and the nation's food supply. Reduced corn yields would be felt widely, as the crop is used to feed cattle, converted into fuel, and refined into ingredients used in processed foods, among other applications. 'Corn is so essential to the U.S. food system,' said Sam Pottinger, a data scientist at University of California, Berkeley and the lead researcher of the study. 'There's the corn we eat, but we also feed it to the livestock. It's just an absolute cornerstone to how we feed everyone in the country.' In recent years, climate change has strained the U.S. property insurance market, as insurance companies have raised homeowners' premiums and in some cases pulled out of risky areas altogether. Pottinger's study seems to reflect similar cracks in the federal crop insurance system, which wasn't designed to account for the kind of yield volatility farmers are likely to experience if the rise in global temperatures continues unmitigated. First established in the 1930s as an agricultural support in the wake of the Great Depression, the Federal Crop Insurance Program, or FCIP, got permanent authorization from Congress in 1980. Not all farms can afford these policies or choose to enroll in them: The program covered about 13 percent of U.S. farms in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. Data suggests that the way federal crop insurance is currently set up is most attractive to the nation's largest farmers — for example, as the number of farms insured under FCIP decreased from 2017 to 2022, but the number of acres insured went up. Meanwhile, smaller farms and those that focus on specialty crops such as fruits and vegetables are less likely to have federal coverage. Farmers who go without insurance are on their own when extreme weather strikes, forced to rely on savings to make up for lost income or reach out to other USDA subagencies for support. Rising temperatures have already taken a major toll on the FCIP. Climate change drove up federal crop insurance payouts by $27 billion in the period between 1991 and 2017, according to a Stanford University study. A separate 2023 report by the Environmental Working Group, an activist group focused on pollutants, found that federal crop insurance costs grew more than 500 percent over a roughly two-decade period ending in 2022. Given this astronomical jump, Pottinger was not sure if he and his colleagues would see another significant increase in costs in their projections for the future. The team used a machine learning model to simulate growing conditions under one of the more moderate warming scenarios laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.'s top body of climate scientists. The team's results were 'eye-popping,' said Pottinger, who at one point worried they'd made a mistake in the calculations. To contextualize the results, he mentioned the 2012 to 2013 growing season, which was especially bad for corn farmers, with yields around 23 percent lower than expected. 'What our simulations are saying is: That year was bad, but that kind of a bad year is going to happen a lot more often.' Eunchun Park, an assistant professor focused on agricultural risk at the University of Arkansas, said the paper's methodology was sound and its findings are 'well aligned' with his previous research on crop insurance. (Park did not participate in the study; he is, however, engaged in similar research with one of the study's co-authors.) Stephen Wood, an associate research professor at the Yale School of the Environment, agreed about the methodology but noted that the study's loss estimates may be on the high end — since the algorithm used by the researchers didn't account for farmers planting different crops or changing planting strategies after a bad harvest. 'It's a good analysis, but it's probably a maximum impact, because there are adaptation measures that could mitigate some of that,' he said. Park noted, as the paper does, that the FCIP isn't prepared for the kind of yield volatility that climate change is creating. Under the program's Yield Protection plan, for example, farmers can insure their crops up to a certain percentage of their actual production history, or the average of a grower's output over recent years. If a farmer's yield falls below that average, say, due to extreme heat or a hail storm, then the plan will make up the difference. But averages do not reflect dramatic dips or spikes in yield very well. If a farmer's yield is 180 bushels of corn per acre one year and then 220 the next, they have the same average yield as a farmer who harvests 150 bushels per acre and 250 bushels per acre over the same time period. However, the latter scenario costs the insurance provider — in this case, the federal government — a lot more money. Pottinger and his team say lawmakers could ease the financial burden on farmers and the FCIP by tweaking the nation's farm bill, which governs U.S. agricultural policy roughly every five years, so that the FCIP rewards growers for using regenerative agriculture methods. These practices, like planting cover crops alongside commercial crops and rotating crops from field to field, help boost soil health and crop resilience. Wood's previous research has found that agricultural lands with more organic matter in the soil fare better in extreme weather events and see lower crop insurance claims. And other research has shown cover crops confer some resilience benefits against droughts and excessive heat. Regenerative agriculture techniques may, however, cause lower yields in the early stages of implementation. 'Crop insurance doesn't have a good way to recognize that right now,' said Pottinger. Both Park and Wood predicted that the Risk Management Agency, the part of the USDA that regulates crop insurance policies, may be reluctant to change its approach to regenerative agriculture. 'There's some resistance there,' said Wood. Pottinger emphasized that while his team recommends making crop insurance more inclusive to regenerative agriculture practices, his report does not try to 'dictate practice' for farmers. He thinks growers should decide for themselves whether to try cover cropping, for instance. 'Farmers know their land better than anyone else,' he said. 'And they should really be empowered to make some of those decisions and just be rewarded for those outcomes.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As temperatures rise, the US Corn Belt could see insurance claims soar on May 14, 2025.
Otago Daily Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Councillor's attendance questioned
Nobby Clark. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark has hit out at an attempt by a councillor to ask for details about museum build costs, saying if he turned up to meetings he would be aware of the money involved. Mr Clark and Cr Ian Pottinger were at odds at yesterday's infrastructure and projects committee meeting after the councillor proposed a notice of motion seeking answers to questions about how money had been spent. In March, Cr Pottinger filed a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request seeking details on the amount spent on consultants for Project 1225, which includes the new museum for Southland, the tuatara enclosure and a storage facility in Tisbury. Speaking to the motion, he said after reading the information he had questions about how money had been spent. He outlined those questions which were included in an amended resolution asking council staff to prepare a report explaining why $337,927 was spent on museum operational advice, if the $249,519 spent on legal services involved litigation or mediation and what the $387,000 spend on fit-out and design was related to. During the discussion of the motion, Mr Clark said it was with a "reasonable level of frustration" that he listened to Cr Pottinger speak to the motion. In the past seven months the project had been discussed at length during four meetings, he said. "Three of those four meetings he's been an apology." At the council's July 30 meeting where eight resolutions regarding the museum were passed, the only one Cr Pottinger opposed was a proposal to consult the public. Cr Pottinger called a point of order and said the reason he was not at the meeting was because he was in the United States. "This is getting personal from the mayor against me." He asked the meeting chairman Cr Grant Dermody to intervene. Cr Dermody said he was about to and asked Cr Pottinger to be "respectful". "We're not going to get into a tit for tat here." Mr Clark said the time to have input had been at those earlier meetings. "It's a bit rich to come back at this late stage in an election year and do politicking."
Agriland
07-05-2025
- Business
- Agriland
50 years of tillage tools celebrated by Pottinger
The agricultural machinery giant Pottinger started off life with Franz Pottinger in 1871 when he built a forage cutting machine. From then onwards, grassland equipment became the staple of the company for over another century. It was in 1975 that Pottinger acquired Bayerische Pflugfabrik, or Bavarian Plough Factory in Landsberg, a town situated in South West Bavaria, 40 miles west of Munich. Aerial view of the Landsberg factory purchased 50 years ago The plough factory is one of the oldest manufacturers of soil preparation implements in Germany and, with this acquisition, Pottinger acquired 85 years of experience along with the expertise to develop high-quality arable farming machinery. Since then, Pottinger has launched numerous new ranges of machinery, including the new Servo generation of trend-setting ploughs launched in 1981, the built-to-last Lion power harrows in 1991, and the Synkro linkage-mounted stubble cultivator. Bernberg A further acquisition was the purchasing of the Rabe seed drill plant in Bernburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in 2001, marking Pottinger's entry into the crop establishment market, and expanding its tillage portfolio to include mechanical, pneumatic and mulch seed drills. Another investment of €4.5 million was made by Pottinger in 2021, as it bought out the mechanical crop care division of CFS of Switzerland. The Pottinger Rotocare is more often used to break the crust of continental fields than for weed control This brought in the expertise to develop and market mechanical crop care machines such as rotary hoes, row crop cultivators, and light tine harrows,, which were subsequently added to the product portfolio. In 2022, Pottinger took over the Italian MaterMacc company, which is known for its expertise in precision planting technology, mechanical and pneumatic seed drills, crop care machines, and other original equipment manufacturers components. Anniversary website from Pottinger Pottinger consider 2025 as a major anniversary year that will feature numerous activities, retrospectives, and special anniversary offers on tillage farming equipment, crop care machines, grassland implements, and digital agricultural technology. The company has launched a specially created anniversary website which takes the visitor through the developmental history of Pottinger's arable side, with notes, reviews and comments upon the various machines that it has developed over the past half century.
Agriland
05-05-2025
- Automotive
- Agriland
Watch: Terradisc well-matched to four-pot Fendt
When looking at a new tractor, there is always great advantage in having it working rather than driving around a test track, and Kehoe Bros Machinery of Co. Wexford had arranged for a set of 6m Pottinger discs to be attached to the rear of its Fendt 620 Vario demo tractor when Agriland went to try it. The Pottinger Terradisc 6001 is not a newly developed machine – it has been with us for a couple of years now – but it does represent the sort of work that a mid-range tractor will be tasked with. At 209hp, the Fendt easily met the 190hp minimum power requirement recommended by Pottinger. Discs are often a 'maid of all work' and have as many uses as there are farms using them, so versatility and the ability to set them up easily to suit the conditions and job in hand are paramount. Working depth On the day, the disc set was being used to produce a fine tilth ahead of a maize drill and was operating at a depth of around 2in (5cm) with 6in (15cm) being possible with the 58cm diameter discs. Sunshine and a drying wind meant that the combination was not challenged to any extent, but it did allow the virtues of the Terradisc to be demonstrated, chief among which are its operational simplicity and weight distribution in work. The working depth is altered simply by lifting it out of work and inserting or removing steel collars sitting on the end of the lifting ram – an easy job and very effective for discs on a frame supported by the tractor at the front and the roller at the rear. Collars hinge into place to adjust working depth There is also a row of paddles at the front, which are swung into work hydraulically, a system that also allows an infinite number of depth settings. Pottinger uses the weight Yet the mayor feature of the Terradisc range is the way in which the road wheels fold up and come to rest above the centre of the frame. This ensures that their weight is evenly balanced fore and aft without weight transfer from the rear of the tractor, as is the case with other makes when the undercarriage is left in position at the rear of the machine. The folding undercarriage sits in the centre of the frame to ensure optimum weight distribution When folded up, the weight of the undercarriage is held where it is useful, for instance, encouraging the discs to cut into stubbles without having to add ballast or alter the angle of the discs. This system also helps stops the discs bouncing out of work and makes for a smoother ride. There is one feature which Pottinger has moved away from and that is the adjustment of the angle of attack of the discs. Six cylinders are no longer necessary to haul a 6m set of discs According to Tom Barron, salesperson for Kehoe Bros, this was because this feature was found not to have as great an effect as was previously thought, so the engineers decided on the present standard offset as the best compromise – and nobody appears to have complained. Cover crops Fitted to this particular model, was the optional 500L Tegosem fan seeder unit, which is designed to deliver cover crops or other small seeds to the rear of the frame where it can be pressed in by the roller. The Tegosem 500L fan seeder is a factory-fitted optional extra. The fan seeder is hydraulically driven and, even when the Fendt 620 is working at maximum output, the extra demand on the engine is catered for by the Dynamic Power system, which boosts output in response to demand from the peripherals rather than the power take-off (PTO). Barron told Agriland he can see a growing adoption of cover crops as farmers get to realise the benefit to the soil they bring. He highlighted turnips as being of great interest in the area, as the crop's deep roots break through the soil layers and improve the structure.
The Hill
25-04-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Climate change could deliver considerable blows to US corn growers, insurers: Study
Federal corn crop insurers could see a 22 percent spike in claims filed by 2030 and a nearly 29 percent jump by mid-century, thanks to the impacts of climate change, a new study has found. Both U.S. corn growers and their insurers are poised to face a future with mounting economic uncertainty, according to the research, published on Friday in the Journal of Data Science, Statistics, and Visualisation. 'Crop insurance has increased 500 percent since the early 2000s, and our simulations show that insurance costs will likely double again by 2050,' lead author Sam Pottinger, a senior researcher at the University of California Berkeley's Center for Data Science & Environment, said in a statement. 'This significant increase will result from a future in which extreme weather events will become more common, which puts both growers and insurance companies at substantial risk,' he warned. Pottinger and his colleagues at both UC Berkeley and the University of Arkansas developed an open-source, AI-powered tool through which they were able to simulate growing conditions through 2050 under varying scenarios. They found that if growing conditions remained unchanged, federal crop insurance companies would see a continuation of current claim rates in the next three decades. However, under different climate change scenarios, claims could rise by anywhere from 13 to 22 percent by 2030, before reaching about 29 percent by 2050, according to the data. Federal crop insurance, distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides economic stability to U.S. farmers and other agricultural entities, the researchers explained. Most U.S. farmers receive their primary insurance through this program, with coverage determined by a grower's annual crop yield, per the terms of the national Farm Bill. 'Not only do we see the claims' rate rise significantly in a future under climate change, but the severity of these claims increases too,' co-author Lawson Conner, an assistant professor in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas, said in a statement. 'For example, we found that insurance companies could see the average covered portion of a claim increase up to 19 percent by 2050,' Conner noted. The researchers stressed the utility of their tool for people who want to understand how crop insurance prices are established and foresee potential neighborhood-level impacts. To achieve greater security for growers and reduce financial liability for companies in the future, the authors suggested two possible avenues. The first, they contended, could involve a small change to the Farm Bill text that could incentivize farmers to adopt practices such as cover cropping and crop rotation. Although these approaches can lead to lower annual yields, they bolster crop resilience over time, the authors noted. Their second recommendation would involve including similar such incentives in an existing USDA Risk Management Agency mechanism called 508(h), through which private companies recommend alternative and supplemental insurance products for the agency's consideration. 'We are already seeing more intense droughts, longer heat waves, and more catastrophic floods,' co-author Timothy Bowles, associate professor in environmental science at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. 'In a future that will bring even more of these, our recommendations could help protect growers and insurance providers against extreme weather impacts,' Bowles added.
