By ROGER JOHNSON
National Farmers Union president

Amid the long list of federal projects costing taxpayers far more than predicted, one policy stands alone by coming in billions under budget.

From 2007-11, this policy trimmed taxpayer spending 31 percent when compared to the same four-year period a decade earlier. It even found room to contribute to deficit reduction in recent years at a time when others searched for additional funds.

I’m talking about the farm safety net, and if you’re surprised, it’s understandable.

To read most urban newspapers or listen to elitist think tanks, you’re left with the impression that farm budgets are bloated and that farm policy is a financial sinkhole for the country. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Farm policy currently represents just one-quarter of 1 percent of federal spending, yet it inevitably finds itself in the crosshairs of budget hawks long before more deserving targets.

Instead of tearing holes in the farm safety net, lawmakers should celebrate farm policy for its fiscal sensibilities and for working just as designed. The bulk of the safety net only kicks in when most needed - when crop prices are in a free fall or Mother Nature strikes.

Crop insurance - which is the most important component of the farm safety net for specialty crop producers and growers of most major crops - was specifically created to ensure that private insurance companies, not taxpayers, shoulder the burden of funding payouts following crises.

Last year for example, every federal dollar spent to encourage crop insurance coverage was parlayed into $20 of privately backed protection. That’s a huge return on taxpayer investment, and it was needed.

One needs to look no further than the tornados in the Carolinas, the flooding in the Midwest and Mississippi Valley, the Florida freeze, or the dry conditions affecting this year’s hard red winter wheat crop in the Southern Plains to understand the importance of crop insurance.

It keeps scores of farmers from going bankrupt each year, and thus keeps us fed. It is essential for farmers to secure operating loans.

And in light of the value of this year’s crops - the most valuable in U.S. history - it protects the country’s food, fiber and fuel supply without mortgaging taxpayers to the hilt.

Despite it all, crop insurance has taken a disproportionate share of funding reductions in recent years - more than $12 billion in the past two years - and has again been targeted in the House of Representatives’ proposed budget package.

Here’s a news flash for non-farm state lawmakers: you cannot balance the budget on the backs of farmers. Trying to do so will only expose taxpayers to more pain in the long run.

Following the 1996 Farm Bill, the last time huge holes were cut in the farm safety net, years of poor prices and weather disasters led to numerous ad hoc disaster bills. The funding of such measures was unsustainable, so Congress wisely designed the modern-day crop insurance infrastructure and passed the 2002 Farm Bill to operate more efficiently.

And the strategy worked. At least until some lawmakers started demanding draconian cuts that could put agriculture back in the same position it was in back in 1996.

In a January letter to the New York Times, former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Larry Combest (R-Texas), a lead architect of the 2002 Farm Bill, shared this observation, “Against all the misrepresentations about farm policy, I have some sobering news: If the bottom falls out on agriculture, existing farm policy is already too weakened to prevent a crisis.”

Considering all that’s at stake - from three square meals a day to the 21 million U.S. jobs rooted in agriculture - those words should serve as a wake-up call to us all.