Excerpts from the report: Crops on some 500,000 farms are estimated to be insured each year against damage from hailstorms. The number of hail insurance policies is larger than the number of farms, because more than one policy per farm is often written where landlords and others have financial interests in the crop along with the operator. In States like Illinois, North Carolina, and North Dakota, where important cash crops are subject to hail damage, more than half of the growers use hail insurance. Hail insurance on growing crops in 1966 was $3,132 million, about 2 percent more than in 1965 and another record high. The use of hail insurance has expanded greatly since the 1930's. It is now $1.0 billion larger than in 1956 and nearly $2. 2 billion larger than in 1946. Farmers have been buying more and more hail insurance, mainly to protect the rising costs of growing crops and the higher values of many of their crop harvests.
