FG asked to make agric insurance policy more effective

The failure of farmers to take agric insurance leads to loses from risks associated with their activities.

Isa Tafida, a large-scale farmer in Taraba State, said companies providing agric insurance are not doing enough to get more farmers to insure their farming activities.

He said those that insured their farms are not paid properly and, in most cases, it takes months before a farmer gets paid for the crops he insured.

He said drought, flood disaster, pest invasion, and destruction of crops by animals are major risks associated with farming and because of lack of effective insurance coverage, farmers were always at risk.

According to him, although there is the likelihood for agric insurance to make an impact in the agricultural sector in the country, but the sector has done enough to make any meaningful impact.

Isa Tafida further stated that farmers have lost billions of Naira to flood disaster, pest invention and destruction of their crops by animals but there was no support or relief assistance to the farmers who faced such disasters from any quarters.

He said there is also very poor public awareness on the importance of agric insurance, which resulted in low patronage of agric insurance by majority of farmers, especially in the Northern parts of the country.

He said during the 2022 flood disaster, hundreds of farmers in Taraba State lost billions of Naira of their investment and up till now, no financial assistance has been provided to them by the Taraba State government or the Federal government.

He lamented that hundreds of farmers could not continue with their farming activities because they lost their capital investment and it would have been better if majority of the farming population had insured their crops.

Isa Tafida urged the Federal Ministry of agriculture to embark on public enlightenment programme to educate farmers on the benefit they would get from agric insurance policy.

He said agric insurance companies should also make their services available in all parts of the country and ensure that they remove unnecessary delays in paying insurance claims to the farmers.