Evaluating the Potential of Whole-Farm Insurance Over Crop-Specific Insurance Policies

Since 1996, different formats of whole-farm insurance (WFI) have been launched in North America and Spain. Their rationale is to pool all farm's insurable risks into a single policy that provides cheaper coverage against the farm's revenue losses. We evaluate the gains of moving from a situation of full insurance coverage delivered by crop-specific policies to WFI. Based on the records of individual farmers gathered by the Spanish Agricultural Insurance Agency (ENESA), we select two representative farms in Valencia that have consistently purchased insurance during 1993-2004 for three crops (apricots, plums and wine grapes). WFI is designed to deliver exactly the same expected revenue than does the combined effects of three crop-specific multiple-peril insurance policies, covering from the same risks. We carry out Monte-Carlo simulations to compare crop-specific insurance with WFI, looking at premium differences, farms' revenues, and farmers' utilities (DARACRRA). From ENESA's database we evaluate the parameters of the yield distribution functions, the eligible losses distribution functions and their correlation. Results show that WFI is slightly superior to crop-specific insurance. Premia are 20% cheaper, and certainty equivalents slightly larger. Yet, the left tail of the revenue distribution is only weakly reduced by either insurance strategy, due to crop risks that are not covered by either policy. The main conclusion is that, if crop-specific insurance is sufficiently mature, farmers would benefit from WFI and Governments would enhance the efficiency of their insurance subsidies