Iowa Farm Bureau members last week strongly urged the state’s Con­gressional delegation to protect crop insurance programs from budget cuts that could weaken the vital safety net for farmers.

"It’s really an essential tool for us now," Darrick Hall, a Jones County Farm Bureau member, told Iowa Sens. Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst at meetings in Washington, D.C. "We’re paying the premiums and have a lot of skin in the game, and we don’t want the...