27 



Let me tell you, in specialty crops you can sell $2 million and 

 still lose money. For example, the 1989 lettuce people lost their let- 

 tuce in December and they replanted it. The second crop they 

 planted, by the time it came in, the New Mexico and California 

 crop was in and the crop was worth less, at $3 and $4 a crate. 



They had a tremendous loss even though they had 2 million or 

 3 million dollars' worth of sales. Some of them went into bank- 

 ruptcy. The farmer who loses his personal crop over a 10-inch rain, 

 it is just as disastrous to him. Crop insurance takes care of that 

 situation where you don't have a statewide disaster, but one per- 

 son's disaster is just as serious to him or her. 



Crop insurance can minimize the amount of fraud because the 

 agents would establish that the crop existed prior to the disasters. 

 You pass a bill 1 year after or sometimes 2 years after, and you 

 don't know whether it is out there or not. With crop insurance you 

 would have determined that there was a crop there. Crop insurance 

 would be more equitable to growers because it would be paid based 

 on the valued that they insured. 



If they thought their crop was worth $1 million, that is what 

 they insured it for. USDA could better control the cost to the tax- 

 payer. Ordinarily the Dade County office has two employees. They 

 have had from 20 to 42 employees most of the time since Septem- 

 ber of 1992 working a lot of overtime. 



As an illustration of that, the Secretary of Agriculture, we had 

 about 7 million dollars' worth of crop insurance in the Dade County 

 area. Those checks were delivered within 10 days by the Secretary, 

 and those people were made whole for what they thought the value 

 of their crops were. 



So you would have a lot better service and a lot more timely 

 service. If you are not going to do anything about crop insurance 

 for all growers, for all crops, then I would suggest that you require 

 all crops to be reported to the ASCS offices when they are planted, 

 or require that perennial crops, orchards be reported when their 

 fruit is sent. 



This way you can control fraud and you are in a better position 

 to make crop payments in a feasible way. It is based on the grow- 

 er's own yields. Whenever you pay on averages, you overpay a lot 

 of the less efficient managers and this gets some people doing what 

 they commonly call in the field planting for disaster. 



Thank you. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Badger appears at the conclusion 

 of the hearing.] 



Mrs. Thurman. I think what we are going to do is recess because 

 we have to vote. That is what those lights and bells were that just 

 went off. If you could give us maybe 10 minutes, we will come back 

 and go ahead and continue this and be ready for questions. 



Mr. Wells. Some have to catch airplanes, too. 



Mrs. THURMAN. What time are your planes? 



Mr. Wells. Mine is at 6:45 p.m. I will have to leave shortly. Mr. 

 Badger and I will leave on the same plane. 



Mr. Lewis. Why don't we do this real quick? I would like to ask 

 the panel quickly, and those who have to leave can answer first, 

 what did you think of the USDA's comments, if you want to com- 



