Insurer offers Australia growers water stress yield loss cover

 

 

Graingrowers in parts of Australia can now insure their crops against yield loss due to water stress caused by too much or too little rain, according to a statement issued Tuesday (June 16) by crop insurer Primacy Underwriting Agency Pty. Ltd.

 

Wheat growers in New South Wales can take the insurance cover until July 17 while the product is also available to sorghum growers in that state and Queensland in summer.

 

Primacy Managing Director Steven Green said the water stress cover was a world first for a non-subsidized agricultural insurance market and arose from a three-year collaboration between agricultural production researchers and crop modelers at the Queensland-based Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit and Primacy.

 

The product is a logical and innovative application of cutting-edge crop modelling technology, he added.

 

The research unit brings together resources from the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization, University of Queensland and the Queensland state government.

 

"The benefits to growers include being able to insure against insufficient rainfall or waterlogging for the first time," Green said in a statement.

 

"It isn't about insuring against drought. It's a risk management tool that allows growers to insure against yield loss when a crop doesn't reach its potential, based on rigorous shire-based crop forecast models," he said.

 

Crops must have reached first jointing stage in wheat or the five-leaf stage in sorghum and the simulated yields assume crops have been planted into ground that was fallowed over the previous season, he added.

 

"It takes into account rainfall in both pre-planting and during the crop growth phase and in the event of a claim an agronomist must confirm a yield loss due to insufficient rainfall or waterlogging."

 

The insurance product, which is available until July 17, is underwritten by the Australian insurance unit of Allianz SE (AZ), he said.