Whither the plan for agriculture insurance?

Last week cyclone Sitrang lashed crop fields and washed away fish farms, particularly in the coastal region, devastating their efforts of making fortune. Thousands of farmers are helplessly staring at losses in the absence of cushion or insurance coverage. The government and various other stakeholders have long been calling for introducing agriculture insurance in Bangladesh in order to mitigate the risk of farmers in the event of losses resulting from floods, cyclones, droughts, unseasonal and excessive rains, and other weather-related events.
No insurance scheme has come forth so far to shield food producers. Until now, efforts to introduce agriculture insurance have remained largely limited to piloting schemes, including the ongoing one by the state-run Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC). But the average annual costs of disasters are $300 million.
Only one insurer, Green Delta Insurance Company (GDIC), has so far incorporated crop insurance. A pilot scheme — Weather Index-based Crop Insurance – has been underway since 2021, in partnership with BRAC and Syngenta Foundation and under a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation-supported Bangladesh Microinsurance Market Development Project.
Under the scheme, farmers get coverage against weather perils like drought, unseasonal rainfall, and low and high temperature. BRAC provided coverage to 966 farmers in 2021 when it launched the scheme. The number of farmers under the coverage has grown to 1,093 this year. The NGO plans to expand crop insurance benefits to rice, potato, and vegetables through up to 50 of its branches soon.
Farmers are looking for resilience support and it is our responsibility to take effective insurance models to them with a proper understanding of their requirements. The bottleneck behind introducing insurance schemes to reduce the losses of farmers is the inadequacy of data of cyclones and its impact in the past years. GDIC has developed the weather-based index based on 40 years of weather data. So, we ask the government to prepare a guideline for agriculture insurance by involving all stakeholders.