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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] another insurance question
  • Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 11:56:25 -0500

Is it the same with every insurer in the State of Washington?  The dried grains is absurd as most farms dry on site.  Are you a member of a farming group?

We board horses, but Carriage House Farm does not board them.  Riverwind Stable another LLC does that.  That company leases space from Carriage House Farm.  The State of Ohio also has a lot of common sense liability codes that no one can sue an equine facility unless it is irresponsibly negligent.  This helps tremendously with insurance.

I'd ditch the equipment repair business and follow a don't ask don't tell policy.

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 8, 2013, at 11:22 AM, KAKerby AT aol.com wrote:

I sent through a reply this morning but it doesn't seem to have gone through.  I'll try again, but here's an advance apology if things go through twice. 
 
You are correct that we did have a lot up in the air earlier this year; I'm happy to report most of those questions have now been answered.   However, I don't think that's the issue.  And this goes way beyond meat production, and way beyond local regulations.  Some other activities which are specifically listed as reasons to deny a policy:
on-farm grain drying
any kind of fruit juice, unless it's pasteurized
repair of machinery for a fee (for instance, if folks repair farm implements for other folks during the winter)horseback riding lessons, horse training for others, and/or horse boarding
In addition to the above, sometimes a product or activity is allowed, but only if I followed the insurance company's procedure.  So I can do turkeys and chicken, but only if the birds leave the property for slaughtering and don't come back.  That's in direct conflict with state law, for any state with on-farm small-scale slaughter exemptions.  Similarly, I can do grains, but only if the grains leave the property right after harvest to be dried off-site.  That rules out any sort of on-farm value-added processing; it may also rule out drying and storage for our own use.  I can do hay, as long as the bales are stored in the field.  If I wanted to store hay in a barn close to the house, I'd have to exclude the barn from coverage.  If I wanted to protect the barn, I'd have to find another place to cover/protect my hay.  I found myself wondering how many folks are going to be progressively excluded from more and more typical farm operations as they acquire or renew policies, because of these kinds of ever-tightening criteria.  

Since the FSMA is very heavy on procedural changes and verification, I found myself wondering if the next wave of insurance leverage would be (or might already be) to deny coverage if farms didn't follow certain insurance-company-mandated procedures with their veggie handling.  If the kinds of discrepancies I've seen in meat production are any indicator, insurance company procedures for fresh veggie production won't match state/federal regs.  Under that scenario, folks will have to decide if they're going to comply with FSMA, or be insured.  My concern is that they won't be able to do both.

If this isn't an issue yet with fresh produce, that's good news at least in the short term.  But the list of excluded activities is getting longer by the day.  I can't imagine fresh produce is going to escape the attention of the insurance industry for very long.  I suggest folks keep an eye out for these developments.  I'd also suggest folks who already have insurance, check to see what might have recently been excluded from coverage under a general umbrella policy.  For each of these specifically excluded items, we can get additional policies just for those items.  But of course at additional, and sometimes much higher cost.  That's where I think this is going.  Individual itemized coverage for each type of farm activity, and the small guy will be priced out of the market.  I hope I'm proven wrong.
Kathryn Kerby
Snohomish, WA


 
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