I’ll also note this:
Crop insurance companies are already strategizing how to minimize their losses as climate change intensifies. Since they receive federal subsidies, they cannot withdraw from markets as easily as home insurance providers have in fire-, hurricane- and flood-prone areas.
Last year, the federal government blocked insurance providers’ attempts to pull out of West Texas, a region that’s been scorched by heat and drought.
A quick reading suggests this can be fixed by reallocating the government subsidies.
Agreed. Stop subsidizing it. This will obviously hurt the farmers in the area but hey, free market. Insurance isn’t a charity.
But why? I mean the effects of that are pretty regressive right?
As a country, we want to be able to produce lots of food, that’s a good thing. And we want to keep the price of food down, that’s also a good thing. We don’t want a scenario where food is so expensive that more people need to start making hard choices between eating and rent. And regardless of that extreme example, if we see higher prices on food, that’s going to have a greater impact on the poor than on the wealthy.
We subsidize lots of things, fuel, education, home renovation, etc. Many of these subsidies are pretty important to making our economy operate smoothly. Food production seems like one of those things that’s worth paying for.