FIRST COTTON CROP INSURANCE INDEMNITY 

Fairfield, August 12 [1942]. -- “The greatest thing that ever hit the country”
was the way Odell George, Freestone county tenant farmer, described the
government’s crop insurance program as he pocketed the first indemnity check
issued under that program west of the Mississippi river.

George, whose check was delivered to him personally by Miss Wanda Willard,
Freestone county AAA crop insurance clerk, and Donald L. Cothran, state cotton
crop insurance supervisor, was paid $426 by the Federal Crop Insurance
Corporation as indemnity for a total loss of crop on his 22 acres of cotton. He
was the first insuree in Texas or in any of the other eight states west of the
Mississippi river to receive an indemnity check.

I remember when I sold a bale of cotton in 1932 for four and one-half cents a
pound,” he remarked. “This year, thanks to the AAA program and the crop
insurance program, I sold a flooded-out crop for nineteen cents.”

Father of eleven children, eight of whom still live on the farm, George
operates the farm, owned by Townsend Clark, Jr., on a third-and-fourth basis.
Eight years ago when he moved to the farm, its cotton yield was 98 pounds; now
his average yield is 187 pounds.

This was the first year George ever had suffered a total loss on the farm,
although he had a partial loss last year. He paid a premium of $27 for the
insurance, guaranteeing him 145 pounds of lint cotton, including seed, on 22
acres. After planting cotton in May, Buffalo creek overflowed. He planted
again--again the creek flooded him out around the middle of June. By that time
it was too late to replant, so he made application for insurance adjustment.

I told Odell the minute I read about cotton crop insurance that we were going
to have some,” Mrs George said, “It’s only right that farmers should be able to
insure their crops; and now that we can get it, we’ll never be without it.”

In addition to cotton, his main cash crop, George is producing peanuts, hogs,
feed, and livestock as his part in the Food for Freedom program.

James M. Terrill, Freestone County AAA administrative officer, reported that
692 farms in the county were insured in the first year of the cotton insurance
program. In Texas 54,252 farms were guaranteed approximately 338,300 bales from
an estimated million and a half acres under the program. Nationally, crops on
2,790,000 acres on 171,235 farms were insured.

Although this is the first year in which insurance was offered by the
government on cotton, the program has been in operation on wheat for several
years.