NEW DELHI, 9 July 2020: The Agri-Business Committee of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has organized a webinar on Webinar on Crop and extreme weather Insurance in India Challenges and the Way Forward today.
The Guest of Honor for the webinar Malay Kumar Poddar , Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Agriculture Insurance Company of India while highlighting the importance of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) which was formulated in line with One Nation–One Scheme theme by replacing earlier two schemes National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) aiming, to reduce the premium burden on farmers and ensure early settlement of crop assurance claim for the full insured sum.
Poddar said that the scheme provides a comprehensive insurance cover against failure of the crop thus helping in stabilising the income of the farmers and has been beset by a number of problems for the farmers with unpaid dues in thousands of crores while insurance companies have pocketed the money.
PHDCCI Sr. Vice President Sanjay Aggarwal in his welcome address said that agriculture is the dominant sector and the primary source of livelihood to about 58 percent of India’s population.
Crop insurance can provide economic support to farmers
He highlighted the need of the crop insurance to provide economic support to farmers in case of crop failure and stabilise farm income, induce farmers to invest in agriculture, check and reduce indebtedness and decrease the need for relief measures in the event of crop failure.
He added the measures taken by the Government of India such as National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS), Modified National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (MNAIS), Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) among others to empower farmers and to cope with the production risk associated with climatic aberrations.
Technology can be used to mitigate crop yield estimation
Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre director Dr. Shibendu Shankar Ray in his presentation on Satellite Remote Sensing highlighted the advantages of Satellite Remote Sensing over ground base data such as accessibility and availability, generation of large spectrum of indices to detect biophysical changes in the plant growth and calculation of yield loss beyond rainfall.
He further suggested the way forward by using smart sampling for large number of crops, continuity of pilot survey, mitigating to a system of technology driven crop yield estimation, use of remote sensing for index based insurance among others.
Insurance industry suffered losses worth USD $135 billion in 2018
Dr. S.D. Attri, Dy Director General of Meteorology, India Meteorological Department in his presentation on challenges of weather and climate extremes highlighted the role of weather in Indian Agriculture and reiterated about the Status of decline in rainfall among the states over the years .
He added that Insurance Industry has suffered losses of USD $135 billion in 2018 which is highest in 40 years of spam. While citing the data records over the years, he said that between 1998 and 2017, people ranging about 526,000 lost their lives with an economic loss of about USD $3.47 trillion due to the extreme weather aberrations.
Dharmendra Sharma, Crop Insurances & Agriculture Consultant , Product Design & Implementation PMFBY (Government of Haryana) introduced the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and the features of the scheme.
He said that the 21 states have participated in the Yojna and encouraged transparency and effectiveness among the farmers and appreciated that Government of India has introduced bills for increasing the farmer productivity and demand into the agri-business.
Public Private Partnership ecosystem good in farming
Hemendra Mathur, Venture Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund & Co-Founder ThinkAg in his remarks highlighted the importance of Ag-Tech to the field of farming and said that it is important to encourage the Public Private Partnership ecosystem to enable data modelling and to improve accessibility to the farmers.
He mentioned that the role of Innovation and adoption of technology plays an important role for the growth and advancement of the agriculture sector.
Major disasters recorded from 1998-2017 were climate related
Ajay Karan Singh, Associate Vice President, TATA AIG General Insurance Company Ltd in his presentation mentioned the disaster risk profile of Indian and the impact of Disaster risk in India.
He stated that 91 percent of all major disasters recorded from 1998-2017 were climate related and India is among the top 5 countries with greatest losses due to climate related disasters. Going forward, he highlighted about the finances for disaster risk mitigation.
Himanshu Goyal, Associate Director - Sales & Alliances, Watson Media and Weather at The Weather Company, an IBM Business in his remarks talked about the role of Weather accuracy in decision making for weather insurance.
Chacko Jacob, Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder , MistEO while moderating the session stated that MistEO is India’s first weather risk company and Agri-Insurance being the largest in the world in terms of coverage.
Image credit: yoderbontragerinsurance.com
