That is rather conservative and does not quite comply with our own. figures. Our own records show, if I recall correctly, 1.6 percent, or, in other words, the annual average hail loss in Iowa is equivalent to 1.6 percent of the crop, or based on the $1,000 would be equivalent to $16 on every $1,000 of insurance.

Senator POPE. Do you know, Mr. Green, whether your Department has the figures contained in these proposed exhibits?

Mr. Roy M. GREEN (Bureau of Agricultural Economics). Those Weather Bureau figures are, I believe, mostly estimates each year of the total loss from hail. I do not know that any other State has them as complete. They are prepared for Iowa through a cooperative arrangement with the State.

Senator POPE. I think it would be well then to have these figures included in the record.

Mr. RUTLEDGE. And this is in a little more condensed form. Senator POPE. It might be well also to include the record of hail damage in Iowa as shown by this smaller exhibit here.

(The papers referred to follows:)

7,558

2, 015

11, 636

HAIL DAMAGE IN IOWA

By CHARLES D. REED

[Weather Bureau, Des Moines, Iowa, reprinted from Monthly Weather Review, vol. 59, June 1931, pp. 229–230]. Assessors in Iowa are required to ask each farmer on about 210,000 farms as to the amount of hail damage to crops on his farm the preceding crop season. These data are tabulated and summarized by the weather and crop bureau of the Iowa Department of Agriculture.

Eight years of these data are available at the close of 1930. In that period the average annual hail loss in the State was $4,513,760, while the average value of the crops at risk was $391,483,456. The greatest loss, $7,975,686, was in 1925, and most of it occurred in the storm of August 18, extending from the southeast corner of Poweshiek and the southwest corner of Iowa Counties, almost due southeastward about 60 miles across Keokuk, Washington, Jefferson, and Henry Counties and into Lee County. The total damage in this storm was approximately $5,000,000, making it probably the most destructive in the history of the State. The least damage was $1,598,963 in 1930.

The greatest county damage was $1,076,280 in Woodbury County in 1929, and the greatest township damage was $321,380 in Liberty Township, Keokuk County, in 1924. The average number of townships reporting hail damage in the past & years is 563, or 35 percent of the total number of townships. In 1929, only 387 townships, or 24.1 percent, reported hail, which is the least in the 8 years, but the damage in these townships was rather intense, so the total was greater than in 1930. Data are insufficient to work out definite zones of damage, but it now appears that the counties along the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers and those adjacent are more subject to hail than other portions of the State, while a good many counties in southeast Iowa, particularly Davis, are nearly immune. In the 8 years, 24 counties had one or more years with no damage; 14, mostly in the southeast, had only 1; 4 counties, Dallas, Henry, Louisa, and Monroe, had 2 years; 5 counties, Des Moines, Jefferson, Lee, Van Buren, and Wayne, had 3 years; and 1 county, Davis, had 4 years without hail damage.

In the 8 years, 159 townships, or about 10 percent of the area of the State, reported no hail. It was found that in several cases considerable damage was reported by monthly crop reporters and others in some of these 159 townships from which the assessors reported no damage. This discrepancy may be explained by the fact that crop reporters make their reports immediately after the storms occur, and at certain stages crops, especially corn, in a favorable season, have been known to largely recover from what at first appeared to be almost total destruction. Some months later when the assessor visits the farmer, the crop harvested is so nearly normal in yield that the farmer has forgotten all about the damage.

On the other hand, hail damage is so extremely localized, being large on one farm and amounting to nothing on an adjoining farm, that the actual acreage that escaped damage in the 8 years is no doubt greater than the 10 percent shown by using the township as a unit, and may be twice that amount.

It is recognized that the fluctuating values of crops of nearly equal quantity, or the inflation and deflation of the dollar, makes the dollar an unsatisfactory unit for measuring and comparing hail damage over a long period of years; yet it is convenient; a more complicated method might break down the cooperation of assessors and farmers; and eventually refinement may be effected by applying some commercial index number. The percent of damage requires no such refinement. It is found by dividing the total damage (times 100) by the total value of crops at risk. In this 8-year period it averaged 1.15 percent, the greatest being 1.99 percent in 1925 and the least 0.50 percent in 1930.

Further details are shown in the accompanying table.

Experience of hail insurance companies shows a larger percent of damage than these figures indicate, for the reason that it is easy to write policies in a territory where devastating hail storms are of almost annual frequency, and relatively hard to write policies in a county like Davis, where damage is rare. The rates of the companies must therefore be basically higher and must, in addition, include the cost of getting the business, adjusting the losses, setting up reserves, maintaining offices and employees, and general overhead expenses.

If this line of industry is continued long enough, possibly when 20 years of data are available, a more satisfactory scale of county or even township rates for hail insurance may be worked out.