His Story

Tom Pickford started running a tractor over 42 years ago. He's been farming on his own since 1979, first on his grandmother's farm which has been in the family since 1948. He lives on that same land today, after buying the property and some additional land starting in 1991.

Today Tom owns 400 acres and runs another 300, with a mix of corn, soybeans and winter wheat. He loves farming because he's his "own boss." And he both loves and hates farming because it "makes Vegas look like nothin'." Tom's key challenge is the weather.  One spring he applied ammonia and it started raining, and he had 100-150 acres that never got planted.  He never got soybeans in the ground last year.

Tom says the weather "isn't like it was when grandpa farmed. The weather's changed and it's a whole lot different than it was back then. It used to be you'd get an inch of rain all day. Up the road 2 1/2 miles they got two and a tenth inches in 20 minutes. No one can take that kind of rain."

Tom had heard about The Climate Corporation’s Total Weather Insurance (TWI) program in a couple of different places, and had seen it in some articles. Then his friend stopped by and told him about it, and Tom's response was, "I think I want to try that." Why? "It just seemed like something where you didn't have to prove anything. You don't have to deal with adjusters, like the hail guy I had to deal with. Just let the weather happen and you send me a check." Tom bought his TWI policies to cover his 2011 corn and soybean crops in December, but he wishes he had heard about TWI in November when he “could have locked in a better price."

From the start, Tom knew that he wanted to cover all of his corn and bean acres. Some of his friends said that rains were heavy last year and it wasn't going to happen two years in a row, but Tom thought the opposite. “This year could be worse!” With the tremendous early season rain this year, Tom has already received a net payout on his corn that covers both his corn and soybean premiums with a few thousand to spare.  He's pleased with the performance of his policy, feeling “pretty impressed with it. It's a good deal.”