This article aims to evaluate the effect of insurance on production, technical efficiency, and input use of Italian specialised-quality grape growers. A panel instrumental variable stochastic frontier approach is applied over the years 2008-2017 using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network....

Over the last years, the agricultural sector has faced increasing risks related not only to production activities, but also to climate adversity and a higher frequency of extreme events. These factors, combined with increased price volatility in the markets, have caused greater exposure to risk...

The Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University develops and maintains data to simulate 94 representative crop, dairy, and livestock operations in major production areas in 30 states. The chief purpose of this analysis is to project the economic viability of those farms by...

In 2005 the EU lowered the guaranteed minimum prices for crops in its Common Agricultural Policy and stopped market interventions. Consequently, prices started to fluctuate more intensively, and farmers' incomes are now subject to higher price volatility. A crop price insurance scheme could...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose an improved reinsurance pricing framework, which includes a crop yield forecasting model that integrates weather variables and crop production information from different geographically correlated regions using a new credibility estimator, and closed...

The Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University develops and maintains data to simulate 94 representative crop, dairy, and livestock operations in major production areas in 30 states. The chief purpose of this analysis is to project the economic viability of those farms by...

In 2005 the EU lowered the guaranteed minimum prices for crops in its Common Agricultural Policy and stopped market interventions. Consequently, prices started to fluctuate more intensively, and farmers' incomes are now subject to higher price volatility. A crop price insurance scheme could...

The plant production, as the primary production in agriculture is at risk of natural disasters and other harmful incidences. Thus, the agricultural production which mostly takes place “under the open sky” is always exposed to the influence of many natural factors that cannot be often...

India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the world's largest public works program, has been demonstrated to have beneficial impacts on a wide range of outcomes, but its effects on agricultural productivity have been relatively understudied (Sukhtankar, 2017). We test whether...

Smallholder farmers are increasingly exposed to weather extremes but lack access to affordable insurance products for catastrophic crop damage. This paper analyzes the feasibility of Picture-Based Insurance (PBI) as a low-cost tool to improve coverage. PBI verifies insurance claims using...

This article explores the hedging potential of two weather index-based insurance programmes designed for the Rias Baixas Protected Designation of Origin (Spain). The first alternative insures both extreme and non-extreme weather events, while the second instrument covers exclusively extreme...

Risk often inhibits on-farm investment by smallholder farmers. Recent evidence indicates that index insurance and stress tolerant seeds can separately and partially offset this risk effect. In this study, we explore whether the complementarities between these two risk management technologies can...

This paper investigates the influence of three federal policies often conjectured to have some of the most pronounced effects on food markets: subsidized crop insurance; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and ethanol promotion. Results indicate that removing subsidized crop...

Weather index-based crop insurance is increasingly becoming important as a risk mitigation strategy that farmers may use to mitigate adverse climate shocks and natural disasters encountered during farming. While Europe, North America, and Asia account for 20.1%, 55%, and 19.5% of the total...

We employ a novel approach to investigate the reasons for a low demand for agricultural insurance. We confirm that farmers systematically undervalue agricultural insurance. First, we find that private transfers, mainly from family members, explain under-valuation of agricultural insurance....

This book presents a technical approach to promoting the development of disaster and climate change risk financing and transfer strategies, and discusses several practical issues, chiefly focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean. Innovative risk financing and insurance mechanisms are vital...