The Sunday News
Charleen Ndlovu, Business Reporter
FARMERS have been urged to consider insuring their livestock and crops to guard against losses.
The country is likely to experience low harvest due to low rainfall expected this season. In an interview, Federation of Farmers Union president Mr Wonder Chabikwa said farmers should consider taking up drought insurance to avoid total loss this season.
“Currently insurance uptake is not good enough and this year we are likely to experience a drought which may affect production. The prolonged severe drought conditions will negatively affect livestock and crop production. So we want to urge farmers to take up drought insurance,” he said.
According to a report, titled Zimbabwe Food Security Outlook (December 2018 to May 2019), low rainfall would increase the national maize deficit to below-average for the 2018-19 marketing season to March 2019. Production would be negatively affected by delays in rainfall being experienced in the 2018/19 season. Mr Chabikwa said farmers are encouraged to continue insuring their farm output and inputs even during a good season.
“However, we encourage farmers to continue taking up insurance even when the season is good to avoid making huge losses. We were insuring tobacco against hail but as farmers we are also supposed to insure our livestock, equipment including our houses on the farms because on many occasions as farmers we come across different kinds of natural disasters,” he said.
Mr Chabikwa said the union was appealing to insurance companies to help them raise awareness on the importance of insurance.
“We are appealing to insurance companies to also assist us to raise awareness by attending our meetings where farmers are gathered so that they can answer all the questions that the farmers have on insurance and also convince them to take up insurance policies,” he said.
Insurance Council of Zimbabwe (ICZ) marketing and public relations consultant Miss Ringisai Batiya said there were many risks associated with operating a farm without insurance cover. She said that uptake of insurance by most grain and a livestock farmer has remained low.
“Risks associated with not having cover are partial or total loss of crop due to flooding, drought, accidental damage caused by fire, hail, windstorm, stray domestic animals and riot strike and malicious damage and inability to continue farming operations due to such losses.
“Most of the newly resettled farmers are from a subsistence farming background that did not have a culture of using insurance as a risk management tool. Lack of awareness is also a contributor. Most tobacco farmers do insure their crop hence this relates to grain and animal farmers,” she said.
She said that ICZ was working on various initiatives to improve insurance uptake by farmers.
“The industry in partnership with IPEC has been carrying out awareness campaigns to promote uptake of insurance products and services in general. There is obviously a need to have targeted campaigns focusing on agriculture insurance educating farmers on the insurance products available and benefits of such covers,” she said.
