Crop Insurance, A blooming opportunity for Actuaries

Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Friday said the government would soon come out with a new crop insurance scheme in which farmers will have to pay lower premium and also remove anomalies in claim settlement.




Replying to a discussion on drought in Lok Sabha, the minister said the government will set up a committee to look into the revamp of minimum support price and promised to create a national market for agricultural produce by May 2017.



Singh said the NDA government would provide soil health card to every farmer by March 2017. On the drought situation in the country, he said reports coming from nine states mentioned that 207 districts were affected by drought.



"When the drought started, we had provided funds to the states. Because of the contingency plan that we had put in place, the impact on productivity has been less compared to what it should have been," Singh said.



The agriculture minister said nine states, including Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand, were affected but the government had put in place contingency plans which had limited its impact.
Source - TOI

WHY INDIA IS BIG OPPORTUNITY? 

1. Varying climate risks with the country 
2. Large Agriculture base that is dependent on Weather 
3. India is divided in 15 agro-climatic zone
4. Climate extremes exists in each climatic zone 
5. Different vulnerability to weather – Himalayan and sub-Himalayan region has low temp risks – Northern plains suffer from temperature variations and drought – Eastern and Southern region face floods and high humidity related risks.

Any good news about insurance is a good news for actuaries, after all there cant be crop insurance without actuaries.