When you look at a program like AgriInsurance, any insurance program has to be actuarially sound. It has to be self-sustaining over time.
Again, I realize that probably not all the options are within my scope. But if the problem is too low a coverage and too high a premium, then one of the choices is to increase coverage arbitrarily, which in turn is going to mean premiums will have to be increased. There are not a lot of ways to get around either one of those things.
I have a real issue, because in our sector--and I admit that it's of narrower scope, a narrower focus than the other people addressed, because I'm pretty well talking about one commodity here--I'm talking about an industry for which over half the production is processing that is sold mostly via pre-season contracts, so the price isn't going to vary. Most variation on those farms is because of production. The situation they face is very different from that of a person even in our own sector who would be growing for table stock on an open market, where the price as well as production fluctuate, and then he would get hammered just as the grain or beef producers would. It would be the same situation.
That's why I said that if crop insurance were more broadly based, it would be more protected, because there would be a larger pool with which to average and, therefore, I would think, there should be fewer fluctuations on the production side. That would be one help. Encouraging that as costs go up and coverage goes down is an impossible job. So we either have to arbitrarily hold coverage up or put premiums at such a rate that people still think there is value there.
My point was that even a low premium for low coverage is not the answer, because costs are increasing and, as somebody mentioned here, it is not a cost-of-production insurance. The per unit rate is based on market prices over a period of years and oftentimes it's not as reflective. That average market price does not go up as directly as our costs have been going up in recent years, so we already have a lag in value there. So even 80% crop insurance does not cover our cost of production. It covers a big chunk of it, and if you have AgriStability and AgriInvest to help top it up, that's a workable angle.