Agricultural Zoning of Climatic Risks An assistance tool for agricultural insurance

Abstract

The Crop Risk Zoning, coordinated by Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (Mapa) is an agricultural police tool for crop risk management. This technical tool aims to recommend planting dates by city, related with crop maturity and to the soil type, for minimizing the climate hazer probability to occur during the more sensitive crop stages. In Brazil, the Programa de Garantia da Atividade Agropecuária (Proagro), administrated by Banco Central do Brasil (Bacen), has established by the Act no 5.969, 1973, and implemented in 1975. After being reformulated, from 1996 on, this Programme has included the technical recomendatios of crop risk zoning from Mapa as a compulsory condition for crop insurance polices of rural credit loans. This paper has worked with Proagro statistical series from 1995–1996 up to 2003–2004 crop season, 9 consecutives crop seasons, with the goal to analyze the pattern of that Programme for Wheat crop in Paraná State, after compulsory utilization of “crop risk zoning” technology for crop insurance polices, occurred in 1996. This study has observed an increase in the number of polices, due to farmer’s perception of highly climate-risk crop and to lowered premium taxes, maintenance in Losses Communications (COP) during that period, which has lead to a decrease in the Losses Communications (COP)/number of polices ratio, which means less crop losses. The premium collected, herein called “Adicional”, was enough for payments during the seasons 1995–1996, 1996–1997, 2002–2003 e 2003–2004. On the other hand, Proagro has shown deficits during the seasons 1997–1998 to 2001–2002, probably due to the intensity of climatic events that have occurred, mainly frost, and due to the need of better adjustments on actuarial premium price to be used in wheat crop in State of Paraná. Finally, the climatic risk events that have affect the wheat crop during the analyzed period were, mainly frost in 6 crop seasons, followed by drought, hail and excess of rain.