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Agricultural Risk Management Through Weather Based Insurance

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Publication date
16/06/2010
Number of Pages
9
Language:
English
Type of Publication:
Articles & Journals
Focus Region:
Asia and the Pacific
Focus Topic:
Climate / Weather / Environment
Type of Risk:
Weather & Climate related
Type of Risk Managment Option:
Risk transfer
Commodity:
Crops
Author
V.U.M.Rao
Organization
Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad

griculture production and farm incomes in India are frequently affected by natural disasters such as droughts, floods, cyclones, storms, landslides and earthquakes. Susceptibility of agriculture to these disasters is compounded by the outbreak of epidemics and man-made disasters such as fire, sale of spurious seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, price crashes etc. All these events severely affect farmers through loss in production and farm income, and they are beyond the control of the farmers. With the growing commercialization of agriculture, the magnitude of loss due to unfavorable eventualities is increasing. The question is how to protect farmers by minimizing such losses. For a section of farming community, the minimum support prices for certain crops provide a measure of income stability. But most of the crops and in most of the states MSP is not implemented. In recent times, mechanisms like contract farming and future’s trading have been established which are expected to provide some insurance against price fluctuations directly or indirectly. But, agricultural insurance is considered an important mechanism to effectively address the risk to output and income resulting from various natural and manmade events. Agricultural Insurance is a means of protecting the agriculturist against financial losses due to uncertainties that may arise agricultural losses arising from named or all unforeseen perils beyond their control (AIC, 2008).