Wichita ? Bolstered by higher taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance, Kansas farmers hard hit by this year’s drought are in far better shape to withstand losses than in the disastrous 1996 crop year, insurance experts say.

And if the earliest claims now being filed on this year’s wheat crop are any indication, a dismal harvest is at hand.

A combine works a field near DeSoto. As farmers in western Kansas suffer wheat crop losses, Douglas County area farmers say they are faring better. Area farmers were expecting average yields between 30 and 50 bushels per acre.

Kansas wheat growers have embraced the Crop Insurance Reform Act of 2000 which increased the government subsidy of crop insurance premiums in a move designed to encourage farmers to carry higher levels of coverage.

In 1996 the last year Kansas suffered major wheat crop losses only 2.4 percent of the insured acres carried coverage at 70 percent or higher of losses.

That compares to this year’s crop that has 62.5 percent of insured acres covered at that level, said Rebecca Davis, director of the Topeka regional office of the risk management agency.

As of Monday, roughly 3,633 farmers had filed claims with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s risk management agency reflecting mostly the very earliest losses from winter kill and drought-abandoned acres. Those damages covered 453,667 acres, totaling nearly $30.6 million in Kansas alone.

But it will be months most likely the end of summer before the agency gets through processing all the crop insurance claims from a backlog of abandoned acres already filed, plus all the new claims coming in from the paltry wheat harvest.

“It will be significantly worse,” Davis said. “Right now we are still processing abandoned acres that have been released. Those acres harvested, we haven’t processed.”

The amount of damages the agency pays out has been rising in Kansas at a rate of about $3 million each week, with the next updated numbers to be released on Monday, Davis said.

A county-by-county breakdown of the insurance claims shows Greeley County farmers claiming the most losses by far about $5.76 million of insured wheat acres lost in that central-western county alone.

The losses in Greeley were so much higher than everywhere else in the state that USDA officials looked further and found farmers there had huge losses from winter kill and crops faring so badly the acres were released early for payment by insurance adjusters, Davis said.

“Farmers knew early on they weren’t going to harvest,” she said.

And another 10 Kansas counties already have filed insurance losses of about $1 million or more and that number is rising each week.

Among those other Kansas counties with the highest insured dollar losses filed to date: Ford, $1.83 million; Hamilton $1.82 million; Wallace, $1.48 million; Stevens, $1.21 million; Morton, $1.12 million; Stanton, $1.09 million; Pratt, $1.07 million; Haskell, $938,778; and Thomas, $929,165.

Farmers in 77 Kansas counties have filed claims for losses on the 2002 wheat crop so far, USDA statistics show. The losses include winter kill, drought, hail and other crop damage.

Art Barnaby Jr. is a professor at Kansas State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and one of the state’s most knowledgeable experts on crop insurance issues. He analyzed the seven most western Kansas counties Cheyenne, Greeley, Hamilton, Morton, Sherman, Stanton and Wallace which border Colorado and represent some of the driest places in Kansas.

In that seven-county area in 1996, fewer than 1 percent of the insured acres carried insurance at coverage levels of 70 percent or greater. This year, 67 percent of those acres carried coverage at that level.

“Clearly, farmers are better prepared to handle this drought-damaged wheat crop than they were in 1996,” he concluded. “This is largely because of the major shift to higher coverage levels and greater purchase of revenue insurance coverage.”

That was exactly what lawmakers had hoped would happen when they passed the crop insurance reform package: that bigger government subsidies on premiums would encourage more farmers to carry higher levels of insurance.

Total premiums paid by Kansas farmers for their insurance on the wheat crop totaled nearly $72.9 million, with taxpayers subsidizing $42.37 million of the farmer’s premiums.

That crop insurance will be especially welcomed this year.

Barnaby estimated that the seven-county region of western Kansas alone will collect between $30 million and $40 million in insurance payments this year by the time the final loss statistics are compiled.

Statewide, the $30.6 million paid so far to Kansas farmers this crop year is already far ahead of the $20 million paid to farmers for their 2001 wheat crop at this time last year and 2001 also was a dry year, USDA statistics show.

Insurance payments for the 2001 wheat losses totaled nearly $83 million, according to USDA figures.