Crop -insurance-AGRICULTURE INSURANCE

 

C  S  C         V  L  E         T R A I N I N G

AGRICULTURE INSURANCE BASED ON NEW EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Genesis

Agriculture plays a dominant role in economies of both developed and developing countries.

Whether agriculture represents a substantial surplus and agriculture sustainable country for an economically strong country or simply sustenance for a hungry, overpopulated one, it plays a significant role in almost every nation.

The production of food crops including all type of crop production is important to everyone and producing food crops in a cost-effective manner is the goal of every farmer, large-scale farm land owners and regional agricultural situations.

A farmer needs to be efficient.

Having knowledge and information on crop conditions and farming operations will help the farmers to understand the health of their

There are about 10 million such farmers, for whom the issue is with coverage of non-loanee farmers, under the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme and the Weather-based Insurance Scheme.

The “Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme is intended to provide insurance protection to the cultivator against adverse weather incidence, such as deficit & excess rainfall, frost, heat (temperature), relative humidity, etc., which are deemed to adversely impact the crop during its cultivation period.

Under the insurance coverage Scheme, two distinct provisions, season wise are provided as follows:

 

crops, extent of infestation or stress damage, or potential yield and soil conditions.

This in turn will give information on farm production, as yield (both quantity and quality) estimates for all crop products, which will help control price and promote insurance companies to offer insurance and credit support in case of crop failures.

 

KHARIF SEASON

RABI SEASON

Crop raised between June and September/October/November in respect of short, medium and long duration crops, respectively.

Crop raised between November and April.

 AGRICULTURE INSRURANCE

Following are the weather perils, which are deemed to cause “Adverse Weather Incidence”, leading to crop loss, would be covered under the Scheme:

KHARIF PERILS

RABI PERILS

Deficit Rainfall, Excess Rainfall, etc.

Un-seasonal Rains, Frost, Heat (Temperature), Relative humidity, Wind, Solar Radiation, etc.

Emerging Technologies

Identifying and mapping crops help various agencies to prepare an inventory of what was grown in certain areas.

It also helps in crop condition assessment, crop yield forecasting, grain supplies, collecting crop production statistics, facilitating crop rotation records, mapping soil productivity, identification of factors influencing crop stress, assessment of crop damage due to storms and drought, and monitoring farming activity at field level.

The key activities include identifying the crop types and delineating their extent (often measured in acres).

Traditional methods of obtaining this information are census and ground surveying.

In order to standardize measurements, particularly for international agencies and consortiums, satellite remote sensing can provide common data collection and information extraction strategies.

 

Risk period is from “Sowing Period” to “Maturity” of the crop.

Risk period, depending on the duration of the crop and the weather parameters chosen, could vary with individual crop and Reference Unit Area.

Triggers are fixed keeping in mind the moisture/water requirement of a particular Crop to produce a Normal Yield.

For Groundnut, the 4 key Crop- stages identified are:

(i)         Sowing & Germination;

(ii)        Vegetative phase;

(iii)       Flowering & Pegging; &

(iv)       Pod formation & Maturity.

Sum Insured for Deficit Rainfall (i.e. the Maximum Pay-out) are distributed over the 4 key Crop-stages keeping in mind the relative importance of each stage.

 AGRICULTURE INSRURANCE

Satellite remote sensing offers an efficient and reliable means of collecting the information required, in order to map crop type, acreage and crop condition.

It provides both field level information and synoptic view, which gives information about the health of the vegetation.

The spectral reflection of a field will vary with respect to changes in the phenology (growth), stage type, and crop health, and thus can be measured and monitored by multispectral sensors.

The high-resolution satellite data increases the information available for distinguishing each target class and its respective signature.

Thus there is a better chance of performing a more accurate classification. Interpretations from remotely sensed data can be input to a geographic information system (GIS) and crop rotation systems.

This can be combined with ancillary data to provide information of ownership, management practices etc.

 

Crop identification and mapping benefit from the use of multitemporal imagery to facilitate classification by taking into account changes in

 

reflectance as a function of plant phenology (stage of growth). This in turn requires seasonal high- resolution satellite data for growing seasons.

For example, crops like canola (Sarsoon in Hindi) may be easier to identify when they are flowering, because of both the spectral reflectance change, and the timing of the flowering.

 

Some times multisensor data may be valuable for increasing classification accuracies by contributing more information than a sole sensor could provide, viz. information relating to plant structure and moisture by microwave satellite sensor and chlorophyll content and the canopy structure, by multi spectral sensors.

The tropical agricultural crops have distinct multispectral signatures. Monitoring stages of rice growth is a key application in tropical areas, particularly Asian countries.

These data are used to classify crop type over a regional scale to conduct regional inventories, assess vegetation condition, estimate potential yield, and finally to predict similar statistics for other areas and compare results, with the use of high resolution optical, land use, and parcel measurement.

With these methodologies it is possible to estimate the crop yield and .assess insurance coverage, in case of crop failure.

 

Satellite images are used as mapping tools to classify crops, examine their health and viability, and monitor farming practices.

Agricultural applications of satellite remote sensing include the following:

a)         crop type classification;

b)         crop condition assessment;

c)         crop yield estimation;

d)         mapping of soil characteristics;

e)         mapping of soil management practices;

f)          compliance monitoring (farming practices)

 AGRICULTURE INSRURANCE

Assessment of the health of a crop, as well as early detection of crop infestations, is critical in ensuring good agricultural productivity.

Stress associated with, for example, moisture deficiencies, insects, fungal and weed infestations, must be detected early enough to provide an opportunity for the farmer to mitigate.

Also, crops do not generally grow evenly across the field and consequently crop yield can vary greatly from one spot in the field to another.

These growth differences may be a result of soil nutrient deficiencies or other forms of stress. Remote sensing allows the farmer to identify areas within a field which are experiencing difficulties, the knowledge of which can facilitate appropriate support system for farm productivity.

Satellite images and maps as well as statistical and graphical data, indicate vegetation conditions on a pixel by pixel basis and illustrate the predominant vegetation condition.

A detailed, quantitative analysis with mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value on a regular basis for crop and pasture/ grassland and differences between stressed and unstressed vegetation, providing an indication of plant health. Mean NDVI data can be plotted, viewed, compared, and analyzed with any other year in the statistical archive.

Season wise, two to three satellite imageries may have to be taken for the agricultural area, in each State, if advised for crop condition assessment for insurance estimation, in the country.

The project will have great economic benefit in terms of yield estimation, food security analysis, agriculture planning, livelihood analysis and a host of other spin off benefits, for the rural economy, in addition to crop security.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

The mail advantages of GIS are its  flexibility, speed, accuracy, cost effectiveness and capability to handle large volumes of spatial and non-spatial data. In addition, GIS can integrate the satellite data with attributes and has been developed as an efficient modern tool in the domain of map analysis and decision making.

GIS of late, has become a powerful tool to provide ways to use maps to analyse and understand how rainfall, crop conditions, weather and geography affects insurance applications including risk assessment, target areas, crop loss, crop yield, spatial locations and people affected. GIS can be used to provide maps, demographic analysis, area and people affected, extent of damage, insurance estimation etc. Insurance help alleviate the risk and fears by providing affected farmers with monetary support in the event of failure of crops.

Conventional crop or livestock insurance relies on direct measurement of the loss or damage suffered by the farmer. However, field loss assessment is normally costly or not feasible, particularly where there are a large number of small-scale farmers or where insurance assessment factors are undeveloped. Geoinformatics poses as a powerful tool for addressing this issue.

In view of the emerging technologies in Agriculture, the Crop Condition Assessment for estimation of insurance support to affected farmers will give a fillip to the development of agriculture in the country.