Please note, this event was rescheduled from its original date (March 26). The below event details are up to date. If you have any questions, please reach out to Julia Barton at OFA (Julia@OrganicFarmersAssociation.org).

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The Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), is partnering with the Organic Farmers Association (OFA), and National Organic Coalition (NOC) to host a series of virtual farmer-to-farmer networking sessions, Seeds of Success. These facilitated events will be interactive, informal spaces for farmers to share their challenges and successes, and will give farmers an opportunity to have open conversations on topics most relevant to them.

During the third session of the Seeds of Success series, OFA will explore Crop Insurance for Organic Farmers: What’s Working, What’s Not, and How We Can Make it Work for Us on April 16, 2024, at 2PM ET.

In a changing climate, crop insurance can make or break a farmer’s ability to keep farming the next year. But this federally-subsidized program, intended as a safety-net for farmers, serves some producers, growing a few specific crops, better than others. The program, as currently designed, feeds into consolidation of land and resources in agriculture, with crop insurance being the only subsidized farm program with no upper limit on the funds that a farmer can receive from the federal government, a practice which reinforces existing power structures and leads to fewer, bigger, and less diverse farms.

Organic and transitioning farmers, specifically, find themselves misunderstood and underserved in the crop insurance system, as their practices, rotations, transition and certification processes are not widely understood by the agents serving them, and can be in conflict with Risk Management Agency requirements.