Agricultural insurance, the need of the hour
The “andap” phenomenon in the Mountain Trail the past days has destroyed millions of investments of farmers. The mist on the leaves of highland vegetables would become frost at night “burning” or causing vegetable leaves to wilt when the sun comes up later in the day. Some could save a few of their plots by spraying them with water before the leaves are “burned” by the frost but this could only happen in areas where there is flowing water—which are very few and too far from each other.
The results are high prices in the market due to low supply. On the part of the farmers, their tears for lost huge financial investments and months of hard hard labor from dusk to dusk. Worst to recall in the process are the farmers’ having had to go out into the cold in the small hours of dawn to water the young vegetables or to supervise the sprinkling of the life giving liquid. Only for all their crops to be lost in a few cold days.
The phenomenon and the losses of farmers have been going on for decades and decades and the government has yet to come up with solutions to the problem. Year in and year out, whenever the phenomenon happened, the government practically just watched on the sidelines. Well, they might have done some things, but these are too small vis-à-vis the problem they could hardly be called solutions.
There are only two viable solutions that come to mind. One is for the government to subsidize farmers’ losses whenever such phenomenon happens this time of year. This is the easy way out but one that the government can hardly afford.
The more viable answer would be crop or agricultural insurance. There was supposed to be a private company offering such insurance product but its business in this part of the country appears to be slow. It is still a new thing as far as farmers are concerned who would be naturally wary on its offered benefits. They might even look at it as a scam—as many insurance companies really are.
This is where the government could come in. It can help in promoting the acceptability of the business to farmers by offering reinsurance, syndication or guarantee arrangements so the unlucky farmers who will end up losing their crops can have a way to lessen their losses.
But just like any new idea (which crop insurance is in this country) it will take some time (perhaps centuries here) to take root.**