Innovations and Emerging Trends In Agricultural Insurance for Smallholder Farmers – An Update

The last two decades saw a surge in policy interventions, innovative technologies, and new institutional approaches that spurred the growth of agricultural insurance programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where millions of smallholder farmers do not have a financial safety net. GIZ conducted a first stocktaking and analysis of this development in 2016 and repeated the exercise in 2020/2021 covering 52 national agricultural insurance programs and two regional programs in 32 LMICs.

This report provides an update of the state of agricultural insurance in these countries, and the policies, technologies, and innovations currently shaping it. As the collected data was mainly from 2020 and 2019, effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not yet visible in the numbers. However, it is clear that with stretched government budgets, subsidy support for insurance schemes might be getting smaller.

The study hopes to contribute to the joint efforts of practitioners and policymakers and the ongoing discussion in this important field.