Page 19 - Anne Schechinger News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Anne Schechinger: The federal Crop Insurance Program sent nearly $33.3 billion over the past ten years to insurance companies and agents.

The extreme heat that triggered record temperatures around the world last week is a threat to human health, agriculture, and electric grids — and it’s raising calls for new forms of insurance to cope with the fallout.

Farming is big business, with profits in the billions of dollars every year. But for small farmers, it's often a different story. And as fewer young people get into the hard job of small scale production, rural communities suffer. Meet the people trying to change that.

The goal is to add 4 million acres of farmland to the Conservation Reserve Program, which takes land out of production to blunt agriculture’s environmental impact.

A report from the Environmental Working Group finds that 156 North Carolina hog and chicken farms are in or near floodplains, raising concerns about the impact that flooding on these farm will have on water quality.