Whether the Agricultural Insurance Policy Achieves Green Income Growth—Evidence from the Implementation of China’s Total Cost Insurance Pilot Program

With the rise and popularization of the concept of green sustainable development, green income growth of agricultural insurance policies has attracted wide attention. Whether green income growth can be achieved has become an important criterion for measuring an agricultural insurance policy. In this context, this paper attempts to test whether the agricultural insurance policy achieves green income growth. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces (the research sample of this paper selects 31 provincial-level units (province for short) in China, including 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities directly under the central government. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macau Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province are not included in the research sample) from 2009 to 2020 in China, this paper empirically evaluates the triple-effect of total cost insurance pilot program (TCI) on farmers’ income, environment and public health by employing a difference-in-difference model (DID). The results show that TCI increases farmers’ income, but deteriorates the environment and residents’ health without achieving green income growth. In the analysis of heterogeneity, compared with central and western regions, farmers’ income is more likely to increase in the eastern regions. However, environmental pollution is more severe, and residents’ health deteriorates more, in eastern regions. In addition, the positive effect of TCI on farmers’ income and the deterioration of residents’ health is more obvious in areas with a higher degree of damage, while the negative effect of TCI on the environment is more obvious in areas with a lower degree of damage. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis shows that TCI not only promotes the increase in farmers’ income through insurance density, but also affects the environment and residents’ health through straw burning. Therefore, the government should raise the subsidy standard for farmers to use straw-processing equipment and also to implement differentiated subsidies in regions with different levels of economic development and areas with different degrees of damage.

Assessing the Vulnerability of Rural Households to Floods at Pol-e Dokhtar Region in Iran

The agricultural sector in rural areas is seriously affected by climate change, affecting agricultural production and farming communities. This paper investigates rural households’ vulnerability to floods in the seven agricultural-based regions of Pol-e Dokhtar, south of Lorestan Province, Iran. The primary data for the vulnerability indicators were collected from 322 households. Three main components of vulnerability, including exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, were measured using the obtained data. The weighting of indicators was done by the MSF method and using MATLAB software. The results showed that the social and economic characteristics of households affect their vulnerability to floods. The Jayder, Mamolan, and Afrineh regions, which were more exposed to floods, had less capacity for adaptation. The results showed that the most vulnerable communities could be described by characteristics such as low levels of agricultural insurance, limited access to credit, low levels of income diversification, high levels of unemployment, low levels of social capital, higher dependency ratios, and poor infrastructure. This research showed that diversified livelihoods have a significant effect on reducing farmers’ sensitivity to floods. The study proposes policy implications to increase resilience and reduce farmers’ vulnerability to floods. The government and other development partners should prioritize the most vulnerable areas by improving their access to finance and providing the technical assistance required for increasing their coping capacity.

Inclinations of greenhouse farmers in Turkey toward agricultural insurance

ABSTRACT: This study is explored the reasons why greenhouse farmers take out and do not take out agricultural insurance as well as the farmers’ inclinations toward agricultural insurance and the factors that affect them so that agricultural insurance can be improved. In this context, three districts of Antalya where greenhouse farming is intensively carried out, namely Aksu, Serik and Kumluca, were selected as the research location, and face-to-face interviews were conducted with 200 farmers, 100 of which had agricultural insurance and 100 of which did not. The farms were divided into two groups, namely, those with and without insurance, according to the data obtained. The potential statistical relationship between some selected features of the farms under study and the farmers with and without insurance was identified by chi-square test. Furthermore, the inclinations, views and opinions of farmers with and without agricultural insurance concerning agricultural insurance were evaluated using a Likert scale. Among the reasons why farmers take out agricultural insurance are insuring their crop, avoiding any potential loss, securing their income and presence of disaster risk. The main reasons why farmers do not take out agricultural insurance is the registration and share problems of their lands.

Seeding Crop Detection Framework Using Prototypical Network Method in UAV Images

With the development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), obtaining high-resolution aerial images has become easier. Identifying and locating specific crops from aerial images is a valuable task. The location and quantity of crops are important for agricultural insurance businesses. In this paper, the problem of locating chili seedling crops in large-field UAV images is processed. Two problems are encountered in the location process: a small number of samples and objects in UAV images are similar on a small scale, which increases the location difficulty. A detection framework based on a prototypical network to detect crops in UAV aerial images is proposed. In particular, a method of subcategory slicing is applied to solve the problem, in which objects in aerial images have similarities at a smaller scale. The detection framework is divided into two parts: training and detection. In the training process, crop images are sliced into subcategories, and then these subcategory patch images and background category images are used to train the prototype network. In the detection process, a simple linear iterative clustering superpixel segmentation method is used to generate candidate regions in the UAV image. The location method uses a prototypical network to recognize nine patch images extracted simultaneously. To train and evaluate the proposed method, we construct an evaluation dataset by collecting the images of chilies in a seedling stage by an UAV. We achieve a location accuracy of 96.46%. This study proposes a seedling crop detection framework based on few-shot learning that does not require the use of labeled boxes. It reduces the workload of manual annotation and meets the location needs of seedling crops.

Smallholder Farmers’ Access to Agricultural Insurance Schemes: An Analysis of the Inhibitors in Kogi State, Nigeria

The study examined the constraints of access to the use of agricultural insurance schemes (AIS) by small-scale farmers in Kogi State, Nigeria. Sustainable agricultural enterprise in most developing countries like Nigeria can be achieved through adequate financing especially in the area of agricultural insurance. Despite the existence of insurance services by the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation and other private firms in Nigeria, there has been a low level of participation of farmers buying insurance premium; thus, there is a need to examine the hindrances in accessing the scheme. The specific objectives were to describe the socio-economics characteristic of small- scale farmers, examine the types of agricultural insurance and evaluate the constraints in accessing AIS in the study area. Primary data were collected from 150 farmers with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results showed that farmers in the study area were dominated by the married (68%), literates (81.33) and males (73.33%) with the mean age and farming experience of 47 and 19 years respectively. Crop insurance (56%) and farm implement insurance (46%) were the major types of agricultural insurance used by the farmers. Rigorous procedures in claim settlement (3.266), poor government attention (3.106) poor repayment (3.080) and non-coverage of all the crops (3.093) were among the major challenges in accessing AIS) in the study area. The study recommended that the government through the ministry of Agriculture or Bank of Agriculture should eliminate the bureaucratic processes and bottlenecks encountered by the farmers in accessing AIS.

Precaution Strategy of Moral Hazard Practice in Agricultural Insurance in Indonesia: An Approach of Soft Systems Methodology

This paper uses Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to formulate strategies to prevent moral hazard acts in agricultural insurance in Indonesia. Agricultural insurance takes place, mainly, through Rice Crop Insurance and Cattle Insurance. Generally, the strategies that can be performed to minimize moral hazard practice in agricultural insurance programs are: developing the capacity of human resources, improving field communication, enforcing penalties, institutional strengthening, and adding new products through Islamic agricultural insurance. Specifically, this paper proposes that the prevention of moral hazard practices can be done by implementing Islamic agricultural insurance systems with the concept of risk-sharing instead of risk transfer.

Certain issues of legal regulation of animal insurance as a compulsory form of insurance

Agricultural insurance is a prerequisite for the existence of agriculture, especially for agricultural countries. The present time poses serious climatic, economic, and biological challenges to agricultural production. Insurance should become a tool that will help to balance the risks between all participants in agricultural insurance relations. Insurance should reduce the negative impact on agricultural production and living standards in the country. In the article on the basis of analysis of normative-legal acts, regulating the procedure of agricultural animals insurance the problematic issues are investigated and the ways of elimination of collisions in legal regulation of this type of insurance are offered. The problems of determining the list of animals subject to compulsory insurance are investigated and solutions are proposed. The question of legal expansion of the range of insurance risks for insurance contracts of animals in the framework of the Law of Ukraine «On peculiarities of insurance of agricultural products with state support» is analyzed. The proposed additions to the regulatory and legal acts in the field of insurance of breeding animals will lead to the harmonization of relevant legislation, as well as improve awareness of breeding animals for regulatory authorities, consumers of relevant products and insurers. Keywords: insurance, compulsory animal insurance, breeding animal insurance, insurance risk, insurance of agricultural products with state support

Znaczenie technologii Blockchain w rozwoju ubezpieczeń rolniczych – przegląd aplikacji i rozwiązań The importance of Blockchain technology in the development of agricultural insurance – a review of applications and solutions

Celem artykułu była analiza korzyści i ryzyk związanych z wykorzystaniem technologii Blockchain (łańcucha bloków) w obszarze ubezpieczeń rolniczych. Do oceny potencjału łańcucha bloków wykorzystano analizę literatury przedmiotu oraz metodę studium przypadku. Analizowane były rozwiązania i aplikacje oferowane przez firmy prywatne na komercyjnych platformach cyfrowych oraz oferta ubezpieczeniowa dostępna bądź planowana do udostępnienia na platformach tworzonych przy współudziale i finansowym zaangażowaniu sektora publicznego. Przeprowadzona analiza pozwala stwierdzić, że rozwiązania oparte na Blockchainie, w połączeniu z dodatkowymi funkcjami integrowania i analizowania danych z otoczenia, mogą istotnie poprawić ochronę ubezpieczeniową i zarządzanie ryzykiem w rolnictwie. Oparcie się na danych rejestrowanych i sprawdzanych przez wszystkie węzły sieci zwiększa bowiem pewność i przejrzystość transakcji na rynku ubezpieczeniowym i równocześnie prowadzi do zmniejszenia asymetrii informacji, która jest główną przyczyną zawodności rynku w segmencie ubezpieczeń rolniczych. Inteligentne umowy ubezpieczeniowe oraz rozwiązania zakładające automatyczne płatności i wypłaty odszkodowań (m.in. w stabilnych kryptowalutach), mogą dodatkowo ograniczyć koszty transakcji i usprawnić relacje kontraktowe między ubezpieczycielami i ubezpieczającymi się rolnikami. W rezultacie Blockchain może zwiększyć pulę dostępnych ubezpieczeń i zakres ochrony ubezpieczeniowej w sektorze rolnym. Technologia ta wzmacnia szczególnie możliwości rozwoju ubezpieczeń parametrycznych, które koncentrują się na ryzykach pogodowych oraz związanych ze zmianami klimatu. Z drugiej strony, z technologią Blockchain wiążą się też określone problemy i zagrożenia (m.in. ryzyko celowego zaśmiecania łańcucha bloków danymi niezweryfikowanymi na wejściu bądź o niskiej jakości, problem dużego śladu węglowego publicznych sieci P2P czy wciąż niepewny kształt regulacji i rozwiązań prawnych odnoszących się do inteligentnych umów dokonujących płatności w kryptowalutach). Mimo wszystko należy oczekiwać, że zainteresowanie cyfryzacją ubezpieczeń rolniczych w oparciu o technologię Blockchain będzie rosło. Wpływać na to będą zwiększona częstotliwość wydarzeń klęskowych powodowanych przez zmiany klimatu oraz rosnące koszty obsługi tradycyjnych instrumentów ubezpieczenia ryzyk występujących w działalności rolniczej.