By Namugerwa Martha
Government has launched an insurance program in partnership with National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (Nucafe) to help farmers insure their crops for natural disasters.
Mr. Robert Serwanga, the country manager Agriculture Re-insurance consultants, one of the initiators of this program said that farmers have been incurring losses due to natural disasters like drought which leads them to losing a lot of their capital.
‘’Drought has caused 65% of losses these last few months yet farmers have no control over natural disasters, but with this program farmers will no longer incur losses and they should embrace this opportunity,’’ Serwanga said.
The government has invested shs5 billon and will be paying 50% of the insurance premium for farmers that are interested.
Mr. Joseph Nkandu, Executive Director Nucafe, said that they are going to first help farmers that are engaged in coffee growing in the insurance cover, code named coffee drought insurance index.
Mr. Nkandu added that the country will attain its target of producing 20 million bags of coffee by 2020 and this program has been put to attract more farmers into coffee production.
Agriculture being the most important sector of the economy, farmers needed to insure their crops yet no bank was ready to risk insuring farmer’s crops.
Farmers interested will give value of their crops in a particular season on the basis of farmer’s premium which is 5% this means the farmer will be instead paying 2.5% because the government subsidized the cover by 50%.
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