Distressed farmers receive GHc45,000 insurance package

The Ghana Agricultural Insurance Pool (GAIP) has settled the claims of five farmers, under an outgrower scheme of Agricare Limited in Kumasi, whose farms were affected by drought and the Fall Army Worm.

The farmers, who were subscribed to the insurance package by Agricare Limited as part of an agreement to supply the company with maize for feed production, were given a cheque for GH¢45,000 in total.

The money is expected to be disbursed to the farmers based on the hectarage of farms affected, to make up for their losses.

The Marketing Manager of GAIP, Mr. Jerry Quantson said: “Agric insurance is a subsidised product worldwide; however, in Ghana that is not the situation”.

But he insisted that the involvement of government can make agric insurance premiums very affordable to all farmers, since food security is a national issue.

Mr. Quantson, who was speaking in an interview during the cheque presentation, noted that government ought to partner the providers to help reduce premiums in order that smallholder farmers can easily insure their activities against risks.

For instance, he observed, if government had insured farmers involved in the flagship ‘Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ)’ programme, there would not have been need to seek further a capital injection with the occurrence of the fall army worm invasion.

He is hopeful that discussions with managers of the policy will be fruitful by close of the year, in order to relieve government of the continuous expenditure it spends on farmers when they suffer any loss.

Agric insurance is formed by 16 of the registered insurance companies in Ghana, which serves as the insurance industry’s contribution toward the country’s food security.

The premier agric insurance programme was experimented with and started in 2011, with a ‘Drought Policy’ initially targetting farmers in the Northern Regions who were mostly affected by drought.

It then moved on to develop and introduce the ‘Multi-Peril Policy’, which insures commercial farmers against fire, drought, windstorm, uncontrollable pests and diseases, among others.

These products are expected to help aggregated smallholder farmers seek insurance cover for their farming activities, which can also serve as an assurance for credit providers to offer them loans for expansion and other requirements.

In addition to this, there are other products in place which cater for smallholder farmers who are rather far and scattered.