Vane in the News

Farmer and Agribusiness Risk Management Strategies

Published at Insurance Thought Leadership. View original here.

Managing Crop Production Risk caused by Increased Frequency and Severity of Weather Events

Business owners are often asked the common question, “What keeps you up at night”? Depending on the business, their responses are numerous. In Agriculture, weather is often the most frequent response because it represents one of the most significant external events that can create catastrophic loss to agricultural businesses. Farmers and agribusinesses share a common concern regarding weather and the increasing frequency and severity of weather events that cause billions of dollars of crop damage and economic loss annually. Farmers alone have incurred on average just under $9B in annual loss recoveries over the last 10 years.

 While farmers and agribusinesses share a common threat from drought, excessive moisture, windstorm and other weather events, their risk management strategies for managing weather risk are notably different. Why? Let’s start with a brief risk management 101 discussion.

When managing risk, we have three choices. We can avoid the risk, retain the risk, or transfer the risk through insurance.

1. Avoiding the risk is frequently not an option as it is at the heart of why the farmer and agribusiness exist (i.e., farmer – growing a crop and agribusiness – selling a product or service to a farmer).
2. Retaining the risk is a choice but requires a comprehensive understanding of the risk and consequences for each Agribusiness organization.
3. Transferring risk, particularly when catastrophic risk exposure exists, is frequently the most customary practice for commercial enterprises. Insurance, used as a risk transfer or for risk sharing, is a fundamental economic tool utilized by most businesses to secure capital and to protect against catastrophic economic loss, including weather events that can devastate a business.

Farmers and ranchers extensively leverage the Federal Crop Insurance Program to protect their production and revenues from loss due to weather events. This important risk management solution, subsidized by the Federal Government and available only to farmers and ranchers, helps protect them from weather-caused losses to their crops and pastures.

Agribusinesses, on the other hand, retain significant risk exposure for their own lost revenues caused when farmers and ranchers don’t purchase the Agribusinesses’ products and services due to weather-related crops loss.

Farmers and agribusinesses share the same exposure to catastrophic weather events, but their risk management strategies are quite different. Moreover, Agribusinesses face financial exposure for potential loss of their product and service revenues for corn and soybeans crops in just five of the largest corn and soybean producing states. Representing roughly 60% of corn and 40% of soybean production, these five contiguous states create significant concentration of risk and potential for catastrophic income loss and balance sheet impact to Agribusinesses.

So how do Agribusinesses manage weather risk? Agribusiness can partially manage catastrophic weather exposure through geographic diversification. Geographic spread of products and services can help to reduce the impact of a significant weather event. But is that enough?

Recent weather events, like 2019 when over twenty million acres of prevent plant occurred across portions of the Midwest, or 2020 when a “Derecho” storm impacted crops along a 50-mile-wide path from South Dakota through Ohio, created significant loss to Agribusinesses from loss of input sales, replant guarantees and excessive usage of rental equipment. Because this event impacted the Midwestern states, this single weather event created catastrophic loss to even large agribusinesses selling products and services to farmers and ranchers. Additionally, these types of events create significant risk to lenders’ revenues and balance sheets when they have exposure to operating and business loans to impacted Agribusinesses.

So, while Farmers and Ranchers have Crop Insurance to manage their risk, what insurance alternatives exist for Agribusinesses? Until recently, very few insurance options existed to protect Agribusinesses’ revenues from weather-related losses on their farmer and rancher product and service sales. Like crop insurance for farmers and ranchers, there are currently two types of insurance products to protect agribusiness revenues and balance sheet risk – Parametric and Basis Risk Insurance.

Parametric insurance (or index-based insurance) provides coverage on a predetermined weather event vs indemnifying for actual loss occurred by the insured. The parametric insurance policy insures a policyholder against the occurrence of a predefined event by paying a set amount to all insureds in the covered area, regardless of whether an actual loss occurred to an insured. The advantage of this type of insurance is the simplicity of the program and the generally lower cost. The disadvantage is that some insureds who did not suffer any loss may be paid because the predetermined event occurred. On the hand, some insureds that suffered loss may not be paid, because the specific predetermined event did not occur. This type of policy, under the Federal Crop Insurance program, is known as an index policy. An example is the Pasture, Rangeland and Forage Insurance Policy.

The other type of insurance is “Basis Risk” insurance, where each field location is insured specifically and the amount of coverage, perils insured against, and damage assessment occurs at the field level. This type of insurance matches specific risk exposure and loss payments to an insured’s specific location for actual loss incurred. This type of policy, under the Federal Crop Insurance Program, is known as an Individual Yield and Revenue policy. Examples include the Crop Revenue Coverage or Revenue Assurance Policy. Basis Risk Insurance policies provide the best aligned coverage between risk exposure and coverage specific to the insured location and actual loss experience.

While few weather risk insurance options were historically available for Agribusinesses, innovative technologies, more granular data, and specialized risk management solutions are now available. Agribusinesses, like their farmer and rancher customers, now have new insurance tools to help manage the frequency and severity of weather event risk and protect their revenue and balance sheet exposures.

Don Preusser is a recognized insurance professional with over 30 years of personal, commercial, and agricultural insurance, reinsurance, and legal experience. He is the former President of John Deere Insurance Company where he directed all primary insurance operations, including its crop insurance program and insurance solutions for financed and leased equipment. A key area of expertise has been Don’s focus on integration of various precision, sensor, and imagery technology to create highly specialized underwriting, pricing, and insurance coverage solutions for both growers and agribusinesses.