University of Fort Hare Researchers Report Research in Crop Insurance (A Proposed Satellite-Based Crop Insurance System for Smallholder Maize Farming): Agriculture – Crop Insurance

2022 APR 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in crop insurance. According to news reporting originating from Alice, South Africa, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Crop farming in Sub-Saharan Africa is constantly confronted by extreme weather events. Researchers have been striving to develop different tools that can be used to reduce the impacts of adverse weather on agriculture.”

Financial supporters for this research include Agricultural Research Council of South Africa Funder DOI: 10.13039/100007537 Award: P07000016.

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from University of Fort Hare: “Index-based crop insurance (IBCI) has emerged to be one of the tools that could potentially hedge farmers against weather-related risks. However, IBCI is still constrained by poor product design and basis risk. This study complements the efforts to improve IBCI design by evaluating the performances of the Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite data and ground-based observations (TAMSAT) and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) in estimating rainfall at different spatial scales over the maize-growing season in a smallholder farming area in South Africa. Results show that CHIRPS outperforms TAMSAT and produces better results at 20-day and monthly time steps. The study then uses CHIRPS and a crop water requirements (CWR) model to derive IBCI thresholds and an IBCI payout model. Results of CWR modeling show that this proposed IBCI system can cover the development, mid-season, and late-season stages of maize growth in the study area.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “The study then uses this information to calculate the weight, trigger, exit, and tick for each of these growth stages. Although this approach is premised on the prevailing conditions in the study area, it can be applied in other areas with different growing conditions to improve IBCI design.”

For more information on this research see: A Proposed Satellite-Based Crop Insurance System for Smallholder Maize Farming. Remote Sensing, 2022,14(1512):1512. (Remote Sensing - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/). The publisher for Remote Sensing is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14061512.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Wonga Masiza, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Fort Hare, Private Bag X1314, Alice 5700, South Africa. Additional authors for this research include Johannes George Chirima, Hamisai Hamandawana, Ahmed Mukalazi Kalumba, Hezekiel Bheki Magagula.

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