TODAYcrop insurance
On the Road
By Elizabeth Simmons, Summer Intern
This summer I had the opportunity to travel to two NCIS schools and gain hands on experience in crop adjusting. For the first school, I drove through Iowa to a part of the country I never pictured myself traveling to. Before I knew it I was standing in fields of corn and soybeans, looking out at fields of green that reached as far as the eye could see. I had arrived at the University of Minnesota Southwest Research and Outreach Center at Lamberton. All attendees of the school were from different backgrounds, but a large number of participants were school teachers working as adjusters during the summer, as well as retired or part-time farmers. We worked in teams to learn how to properly identify bruising, calculate defoliation and stand reduction, and when to defer a claim. I learned that bruises are only fatal when they reach the pith of the plant. The pith is a tissue in the stem of vascular plants that contains the transport nutrients. I also learned how food/energy travels through the leaves of a corn stalk. When a leaf is torn across the middle, the 26
november 2011
Richard Hup filling in Soybean Chart.
Steve Quiring demonstrating the hail machine at Lamberton.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crop Insurance Today November 2011