Crop insurance is purchased by agricultural producers, including farmers, ranchers, and others to protect themselves against either the loss of their crops due to natural disasters, such as hail, drought, and floods, or the loss of revenue due to declines in the prices of agricultural commodities.

Agriculture in India is highly susceptible to risks like droughts and floods. It is necessary to protect the farmers from natural calamities and ensure their credit eligibility for the next season. For this purpose, the Government of India introduced many agricultural schemes throughout the country. Crop insurance is one such scheme

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The new Crop Insurance Scheme is in line with One Nation – One Scheme theme. It incorporates the best features of all previous schemes and at the same time, all previous shortcomings/weaknesses have been removed.

The highlights of this scheme are as under:

• There will be a uniform premium of only 2% to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%. The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low and balance premium will be paid by the Government to provide full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on account of natural calamities.
• There is no upper limit on Government subsidy. Even if balance premium is 90%, it will be borne by the Government.
• Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers. This capping was done to limit Government outgo on the premium subsidy. This capping has now been removed and farmers will get claim against full sum insured without any reduction.
• The use of technology will be encouraged to a great extent. Smart phones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop cutting experiments.

Weather based Crop Insurance

Weather Based Crop Insurance aims to mitigate the hardship of the insured farmers against the likelihood of financial loss on account of anticipated crop loss resulting from incidence of adverse conditions of weather parameters like rainfall, temperature, frost, humidity etc.

Let us look at risks covered & exclusions?

Risks: Following risks leading to crop loss are covered under the scheme:-

Yield losses (standing crops, on notified area basis): Comprehensive risk insurance is provided to cover yield losses due to non-preventable risks, such as (i) Natural Fire and Lightning (ii) Storm, Hailstorm, Cyclone, Typhoon, Tempest, Hurricane, Tornado etc. (iii) Flood, Inundation and Landslide (iv) Drought, Dry spells (v) Pests/ Diseases etc.

Prevented sowing (on notified area basis):- In cases where majority of the insured farmers of a notified area, having intent to sow/plant and incurred expenditure for the purpose, are prevented from sowing/planting the insured crop due to adverse weather conditions, shall be eligible for indemnity claims upto a maximum of 25% of the sum-insured

Post harvest losses (individual farm basis): Coverage is available upto a maximum period of 14 days from harvesting for those crops which are kept in “cut & spread” condition to dry in the field after harvesting, against specific perils of cyclone / cyclonic rains, unseasonal rains throughout the country.

Localized calamities (individual farm basis): Loss / damage resulting from occurrence of identified localized risks i.e. hailstorm, landslide, and Inundation affecting isolated farms in the notified area.

Exclusions: Risks and Losses arising out of following perils shall be excluded:- War & kindred perils, nuclear risks, riots, malicious damage, theft, act of enmity, grazed and/or destroyed by domestic and/or wild animals, In case of Post–Harvest losses the harvested crop bundled and heaped at a place before threshing, other preventable risks.