To subscribe to Agweek, click here. Koetz is trying to put the legal pressure on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency to pay for sunflower quality damage resulting from sclerotinia disease.
Sclerotinia is a fungal disease that causes sunflowers to lose yield.
Koetz met Feb. 11 in Bismarck, N.D., with lawyer Sarah Vogel and nine other producers from North Dakota and Minnesota who say the government failed to pay on their insurance policies. Because of sclerotinia content, they deem them as having no value. The FSA last week came out with a sclerotinia disaster program. That's the reason Risk Management is denying the claim, although Koetz says that is not a part of the policy itself. Vogel plans to write to the insurance companies involved to ask exactly why they're not paying Koetz and others, he says.