America's corn crop yield is expected to reach record-setting highs this year. On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the average yield will be an amazing 158 bushels per acre. That is the second highest yield ever. The record was set in 2004 at 160 bushels per acre.

Farmers who irrigate their fields can now sometimes pick 200 bushels of corn per acre. Let me put that in perspective. In 1951 the average field produced about 37 bushels per acre.

When I was a high schooler, the local seed companies gave awards to people who could grow 100 bushel an acre. We held people up as being "outstanding in their field" — a little farm humor there — for growing 100 bushels.

By 1982, the average yield was 113 bushels per acre.

In 35 years, farmers have found ways to increase average yields by more than 50 percent an acre. In other words, they grow a lot more crops per acre.

Now, with so much corn in the field, there is an impending shortage of grain bins in which to store the corn.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Farmers are up to their ears in corn and scrambling for places to store it.

With demand for ethanol soaring, farmers around the country have planted more acres of corn this year than at any time since World War II. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts the fall harvest will yield 12 to 13 billion bushels of the grain, enough to fill 183,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — a far greater quantity than currently available storage capacity.

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Purchasing Crop Insurance

These August days of nutty weather are the days that keep farmers awake at night. They have a nice crop in the field and then comes a windstorm, hail or flash floods that wipe it away. Journalists should learn about crop insurance programs that farmers may purchase. The USDA site provides an overview of crop policies that's worth checking out.

The site says:

The farmer selects the amount of average yield he or she wishes to insure; from 50-75 percent (in some areas to 85 percent). The farmer also selects the percent of the predicted price he or she wants to insure; between 55 and 100 percent of the crop price established annually by [the Risk Management Agency of the Agriculture Department.]

You may not know that there is also livestock insurance.

Here are state and regional offices to help you get local. Locate a local crop insurance agent near you.

The Crop Insurance Research Board has a useful 101 on crop insurance.

And, of course, when money and insurance are involved, there is often fraud. My friend John Burnett at NPR produced an outstanding project on crop insurance fraud a couple years ago. Give it a listen.

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The Truth Behind Undue Farm Subsidies

The Boston Herald reports:

Washington spends more on corporate welfare than on homeland security — and farm subsidies are America's largest corporate welfare program. This year, as lawmakers rewrite the farm programs and push up their spending, they will invoke Norman Rockwell imagery to portray farm subsidies as a vital lifeboat for small, struggling family farmers. Don’t believe a word of it.

Farms have come a long way since subsidies were introduced as a temporary solution to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. Today, the average farm household earns $81,420 and has a net worth of $838,875 — both well above the national average. Farm incomes are setting records, and farms have one of the lowest failure rates of any industry.

To be sure, some family farmers continue to struggle. But if farm subsidies were really about alleviating farmer poverty, then lawmakers could guarantee every full-time farmer an income of 185 percent of the federal level ($38,203 for a family of four) for under $5 billion annually — one-fifth the current cost of farm subsidies.

Instead, small farmers are largely excluded from farm subsidies. Farm subsidy payments are based on acreage, so by definition, the largest agribusinesses get the largest subsidies. Most farm subsidy dollars go to millionaires.

The Environmental Working Group's farm subsidy database reveals that from 1995 to 2005, farm subsidies have been distributed to Fortune 500 companies such as John Hancock Life Insurance ($2,849,799) and Westvaco ($534,210), as well as celebrity "hobby farmers" such as David Rockefeller ($553,782) and Ted Turner ($206,948). Even members of Congress who vote on farm legislation have received subsidies, such as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa, $225,041) and Rep. John Salazar (D-Colo., $161,084).

Click here to look up who, in any zip code, county or state gets farm subsidies.

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Black Farmers Gets Less Subsidy Cash

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has also issued a study saying black farmers routinely get smaller subsidies than white farmers. Could it be that black farmers operate smaller farms or don't grow the crops generally covered by subsidy programs? The EWG says no, that the disparity seems to be deeply rooted in discrimination.

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Sign up Today for Thursday's Webinar with Al

Click here to sign up for our live Poynter Webinar Thursday, August 16, from 2 to 3 p.m. EST. I will show you "25 Places to Get Story Ideas." You will learn about some of the top resources that I turn to while writing this column.

You must register for this Webinar by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 15.

If the $24.95 registration is a problem for you or your newsroom, the Harnish Family Foundation has generously agreed to help with some scholarships. Just go to the sign-up page to get details and technical information about how to connect to the Webinar Thursday.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

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