His Story

George Bercaw spent the first twelve years of his career in agribusiness finance at Farm Credit Services Mid-America and Robobank, before moving to the crop insurance group at Water Street Solutions. George recognized when he was on the banking side that clients often “get pinched time and time again” because their cash flow is off due to banking, marketing, and insurance advisors working in isolation.

George’s philosophy as a crop insurance agent is to look at each of his client’s farming operations as a business and to provide his clients with a total risk management strategy based on rigorous financial analysis. Prior to working with The Climate Corporation, George recognized that the risk mitigation solutions he offered clients were incomplete when it came to weather risk. “Of course I knew there was a gap in the risk management offerings I had, but you have to work with what you’ve got.”

When George first heard about Total Weather Insurance (TWI), he investigated to “see if there was really something to it.” But things started quickly growing from there. And with two selling seasons under his belt, George is passionate about the value TWI is providing to his clients.

“For some of my growers who received payments for early season rain this year, it was a life saver. It was really giving them a nice injection of cash at a time when they really needed it. One of my clients talked about his fertilizer being washed away. He had to put down more to get his crop in the ground. TWI helped with that quite a bit. Some of the growers who received payments in May received payments four weeks later for heat stress. It’s been weather whip lash for these guys.”

One of the reasons George likes what The Climate Corporation offers is that is fills a void left by government crop insurance programs. In addition to closing the MPCI insurance gap that leave growers’ profits exposed, George sees The Climate Corporation’s products as great additional coverage for both GRIP growers who “aren’t going to see any help until the spring next year” and NAP growers whose coverage on their specialty crops “only kicks in during completed disasters.” George says that “Total Weather Insurance is phenomenal for these guys, and gives them great peace of mind.”

Not only has Total Weather Insurance delivered value to George’s clients, he says “working with The Climate Corporation has made me a better agent. I started having to keep a closer eye on the weather and I’ve developed a much deeper understanding of the impact various weather conditions have on the outcome of my clients’ operations. Offering Total Weather Insurance and monitoring my clients’ policies has made me more accountable to my clients and a more valuable resource to them.”

George not only sells Total Weather Insurance, he collaborates with his counterparts at The Climate Corporation and gives feedback on the product. “During discussions with the sales and product teams, I talked about the need for some way to cover severity of rains, not just frequency. The Climate Corporation responded and now that functionality is in the product. And I talked about the need for smaller rainfall grids, and that’s coming in the 2012 corn and soybeans launch. You can’t ask for anything more than that – working with a company who is constantly making their products better.”

Most important to George is that The Climate Corporation is “looking out for growers’ best interests. This is true risk hedging, a totally different realm than crop insurance where you have to wait until the end of the season. And the transparency Total Weather Insurance provides has been great. The Climate Corporation has worked so hard to make sure everything about the product is visible from all sides. I really appreciate that and so do my clients.”