Nearly 90 percent of Americans have a favorable view of farmers, and 92 percent said it was important to provide them with federal funding, according to a new national poll. This is an important finding since the public’s view of farmers and support for crop insurance are critical policy issues. Budget-cutting bureaucrats and anti-agriculture activists have long mounted attacks on crop insurance in an effort to derail the program. When crop insurance replaced direct payments in the 2014 Farm Bill as the backbone of the farm safety net program, liberals and urban lawmakers started trying to chip away at its funding to get more federal dollars for federal food assistance and social programs.
The survey shows that the concept of farmers and the federal government both contributing to an insurance policy makes sense.