CROP insurance: risks, losses, etc. 13 
ELIMINATION OR REDUCTION OF RISK. 
SELF-INSURANCE. 
While the individual farmer can not control the action of the 
weather or the elements, and frequently finds himself unable to com- 
bat the attacks of plant disease and insect pests, he can to a great 
extent reduce the losses that would, result from the absence of proper 
care and forethought. In farming, as well as in other lines of activity, 
the old advice against putting all the eggs in one basket should be 
heeded as far as practicable. The single-crop farmer exposes himself 
to the possibility of losing the results of an entire year's work from a 
single catastrophe. Almost any one of the causes of crop damage 
enumerated in foregoing Tables 1, 2, and 3 may make his year's work 
a total loss. If, on the other hand, he invests part of his capital and 
labor in live stock, or in a variety of crops other than the main money 
crop of the region, it is highly improbable that the causes of loss 
affecting one of his investments will also seriously affect the others. 
The same plant diseases and insect pests rarely, if ever, affect all 
crops that can be grown in a given locality, and even damage from 
climatic causes, such as drought, excessive moisture, frost, or hail, 
rarely brings about a total destruction of all crops in a region. While 
all the crops in a given locality may be affected to some degree by 
each of these climatic contingencies, they probably will not be equally 
subject to damage from a given cause at the same time. In other 
words, the chances are that the critical period of one crop with refer- 
ence to any one of these hazards will be past before the corresponding 
period of another crop is reached. Diversification, therefore, becomes 
a form of self-insurance. 
The added safety to the farmer that lies in reasonable diversifi- 
cation of crops and products is becoming recognized to an increas- 
ing extent by country bankers, as well as by the farmers themselves. 
Many bankers in regions where a one-crop system has prevailed now 
insist as a condition to the granting of a loan to the farmer that he 
shall fill out and sign a credit statement, including an agreement to 
use a safe cropping system. This change of attitude on the part 
of banking interests, from one of encouraging the farmer to stake 
his success on a single crop to a position of urging him to play 
safe in so far as circumstances permit, represents an important 
advance in profitable relationship between the banker and the farmer. 
A study of available information covering dates of the last kill- 
ing frost in the spring and of the first killing frost in the fall, as 
well as that bearing on seasonal rainfall and temperature for his 
locality, will enable the farmer, within limits, to adjust the plant- 
ing and hence the growing season of his crops in such a way as 
to incur a minimum of risk from these causes of crop damage. In 
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