President Dr. Arif Alvi calls for measures such as crop insurance to prevent the adverse impacts of climate change to save the agriculture sector.

Chairing a meeting on crop insurance, he underscored the need to adopt a user-friendly crop insurance system to protect farmers against losses caused by man-made or natural calamities. He called upon the insurance industry to launch a nationwide consultation involving all stakeholders through seminars and workshops.

He said the best practices and successful crop insurance models of regional and international countries should be adopted to get inputs for developing a market-based and sustainable crop insurance policy. He said collaboration with the agriculture universities of the country should also be developed by holding seminars and workshops and conducting research work to help the insurance stakeholders in database.

The president asked the insurance sector and other stakeholders to focus on 93pc of farmers in Pakistan, who had landholdings of 12.5 acre or less while introducing their insurance products. He said the farmers’ contributions should be linked either with crop input or output. The welfare of the farmers should be a priority, he added.

He said that in order to encourage farmers to voluntarily opt for crop insurance, the State Bank of Pakistan may advise the banks to increase their portfolio of agriculture loans specifically targeting subsistence farmers having landholdings of 12.5 acre or less.

Banks, insurance companies and federal and provincial governments should launch an awareness campaign through seminars, workshops, fairs and road shows, said the president. It should also be held through advertisement campaigns on the conventional and social media for educating the farmers to opt for crop insurance.

President Alvi said satellite imagery for determining the weather patterns, authentic database and Artificial Intelligence-based technologies should be used to plan insurance products and give compensation to the farmers affected by crop failure and destruction of crops. It would help in creating resilience of farmers against crop failure due to man-made or natural calamities, he said.

The president appreciated the Punjab government for launching the Punjab Crop Insurance Programme to provide protection to the farmers in case of crop losses.

Officials said 1.48 million farmers of 27 districts of Punjab had been insured against crop failure through a World Bank loan-based pilot programme. They said the contribution of insurance in the country, compared to regional and international countries, was quite low and needed to be improved.

Senator Sania Nishtar, Punjab Agriculture Minister Syed Hussain Jahania Gardezi, Federal Insurance Ombudsman Dr Muhammad Khawar Jameel and representatives of insurance companies attended the meeting.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk