Let Agricultural Insurance become an important guarantee for accurate Poverty Alleviation

Recently, China Insurance Regulatory Commission held a meeting to implement the spirit of the Central Poverty Alleviation Work Conference and identified agricultural insurance as one of the main directions for the insurance industry to fight poverty alleviation. Due to the high disaster risk coefficient faced by agricultural production, agricultural production and operation risks are high. For farmers in poor areas, a sudden natural disaster will push them to the edge of poverty again. In the poverty alleviation work, making good use of and giving full play to the role of agricultural insurance can set up an artificial barrier for precise poverty alleviation by covering the production and operation of poor households.

Since 2007, when the central government subsidized agricultural insurance premiums, agricultural insurance in China has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results. According to the 2015 China Insurance Market Annual Report recently released by China Insurance Regulatory Commission, agricultural insurance provided 1.66 trillion yuan of risk protection in 2014, covering 1.1 billion mu of main crops, with coverage rate close to 50%, and coverage rate of main ration crops exceeding 65%. A few days ago, China Insurance Regulatory Commission announced that 738 agricultural insurance products involving 15 types of crops and 6 types of breeding varieties will be upgraded in an all-round way to subsidize premiums from the central finance, which means that agricultural insurance can exert greater potential in the future.

However, the main body of agricultural insurance in our country is policy-oriented agricultural insurance, and most commercial insurance institutions are unwilling to enter the field of agricultural insurance, resulting in single agricultural insurance products, high premium and limited coverage, and many poor areas cannot even enjoy agricultural insurance services at all. At the same time, in the process of implementation of policy-oriented agricultural insurance, there are problems such as fraud insurance, excessive subsidies, inadequate supervision, etc., which do not give full play to the due guarantee role of agricultural insurance. Farmers can only bear losses alone in the face of natural disasters or accidents.

In the face of vulnerable groups such as the poor, in order to improve the guarantee of agricultural insurance in poverty-stricken areas, it is necessary to promote from top to bottom, mobilize and integrate resources and strength of all parties. On the one hand, government departments should continue to expand the coverage of policy-oriented agricultural insurance, encourage poor farmers to participate in insurance, so that more farmers can enjoy agricultural insurance services; on the other hand, relevant departments need to unite to guide commercial insurance companies to enter rural areas and carry out agricultural insurance business in poverty-stricken areas, so that they can jointly undertake the task of poverty alleviation.

In fact, in the areas where agricultural insurance develops rapidly, farmers not only get compensation funds when they suffer losses, but also get more credit support from banks and other institutions. Compared with ordinary farmers, insured farmers have one more risk guarantee, reducing financing risks, and banks are more willing to grant loans to them. Moreover, insurance institutions can tap the market and expand agricultural insurance products with the help of rural financial institutions. Insurance and credit thus form a virtuous circle. At present, some poverty-stricken areas have been exploring the credit poverty alleviation model of "agricultural insurance + agricultural credit", which is to combine the advantages of insurance and credit to promote the poor people to become rich.

In addition, industrial poverty alleviation is one of the important means of precise poverty alleviation, and the development of characteristic agriculture is the most feasible way for many poverty-stricken areas to get rid of poverty. Then, according to the characteristics of characteristic agriculture, exploring characteristic agricultural insurance products according to local conditions is a test of agricultural insurance innovation ability.

Therefore, we believe that in order to give full play to the guarantee role of agricultural insurance in poverty alleviation, we need to rely on various forces, not only to carry out policy-oriented agricultural insurance, but also to encourage more institutions and capital to enter the field of agricultural insurance, expand the coverage of agricultural insurance in poverty-stricken areas, and increase the degree of innovation, so as to play an indispensable role in precise poverty alleviation.