Crop Insurance as a Risk Management Strategy in Bangladesh

Comments specifically related to methodology of the study:
- Some participants argued that other than crop insurance it would better be Agriinsurance
including livestock and poultry. Especially, in the context of epidemic
breakout like Bird flue in recent years poultry industry is becoming highly vulnerable
to such risk.
- Some participants raised the issue of project sites, such as Satkhira, which seemed to
be not much appropriate as a site from crop insurance perspective, because cropping
is not a very dominant activity in the coastal district. Some other comments also
related to site selection. A control site, without or less disaster risk can be considered
as well.
2.4 Finalizing the Methodology in Response to the Comments in Inception Workshop
- Including livestock and poultry under the insurance scheme along with crop and
defining it as Agricultural Insurance might be a big job to be done. Again the nature
of risk from Crop and livestock or poultry differs so that methodology will be
different. Especially, because the project is specifically aimed at risk management
from Climate Change, it was assumed that climate change will leave more significant
effect on crop yield than poultry and livestock. A separate study is possible to address
livestock and poultry, especially to address problems like Bird Flue.
- Initially, Satkhira and Rajshahi were selected as two districts for field study.
However, after discussion and comments from the Inception Workshop, the team reinvestigated
the matter and finally changed two sites as Pirojpur and Lalmonirhat.
Compared to Satkhira, Agriculture land coverage is higher, also more expose to
coastal flooding and cyclonic storm surges. It is true that Rajshahi is more prone to
drought than elsewhere in Bangladesh and probably a over-studied region. However,
recently Rangpur and Lamonirahat regions are frequently suffering from a seasonal
disaster known as MONGA, which is a combined effect of disasters like flood or
Drought, unemployment and food shortage. Actually, the regions are vulnerable to
multiple disasters, as well as low income level due to lack of industries. Monga
affected regions and their sufferings used to frequently appear in newspaper so that it
became a sensitive issue for government as well. In the context, along with few other
measures, government had already taken initiatives to introduce Crop Insurance in the
region.
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