Risk in Agriculture: Modeling Revenue Insurance for Crop Farms in Belgium

With trade liberalization in the Common Agricultural Policy, farmers within the European Union are increasingly exposed to the risk of fluctuations in output price and yields. Using numerical simulation methods, we model the effects of crop insurance on farm revenues and land allocation patterns among arable crop farms in the Region of Wallonia in the south of Belgium. We employ a mathematical programming framework within which we have embedded an econometrically estimated, farm-specific cost function that allows us to analyze the farm-specific effects of crop insurance