The Agricultural and Agrarian Insurance Board has introduced an insurance scheme for fruit growers, covering pineapple, papaya and banana against natural disasters, disease, pests and wild elephant damage.
The board operates under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation, Ada Derana reported.
The terms
Farmers can insure fruit crops grown in line with Department of Agriculture recommendations by paying a premium equal to 7 per cent of the basic insured amount.
Where a crop is damaged, compensation runs from Rs. 300,000 to Rs. 400,000 per acre.
The cover extends to four categories of loss: natural disasters, diseases, pests and insects, and wild elephant damage. The board said it is intended to help farmers manage risk and stay in fruit cultivation.
What the announcement leaves open
Ada Derana’s report does not say when enrolment opens, whether the scheme is nationwide from the outset, or how the Rs. 300,000–400,000 band is allocated between the three crops — whether the figure varies by crop, by yield, or by extent of loss. It also does not give a claims procedure or a cap on the acreage a single farmer may insure.
No other verified newsroom had carried the announcement at the time of writing.
Where it sits among the board’s other schemes
The 7 per cent premium matches the rate the board set for its coffee growers’ scheme in June, which covered the first three years after planting at Rs. 510,000, Rs. 660,000 and Rs. 840,000 respectively and carried a near-identical risk list — drought, floods, wild elephants, plant disease and pests. That scheme offered optional fire and landslide cover at an extra 0.5 per cent per risk; Ada Derana’s account of the fruit scheme mentions no such add-on.
The board has been steadily widening its product range, having earlier introduced cover for mushroom growers and run an insurance month for pig farmers in August.
Context
The scheme arrives during a dry spell severe enough that the government has had to pay out on field crops directly. Cabinet has allocated Rs. 3 billion in compensation for nearly 8,000 acres of crops damaged by the drought, at Rs. 100,000 per hectare and capped at five acres a farmer — a scheme covering paddy, maize, big onions, potatoes, soya and chillies rather than fruit.
Farmers reporting losses under that programme were directed to the same Agricultural and Agrarian Insurance Board’s development and field officers.
