Managing risk in agriculture
In collaboration with the ETH Risk Center and the Agricultural Economic and Policy group of Prof. Robert Finger, the WFSC organized the event “Managing Risk in Agriculture,” a symposium focused on innovations in agricultural insurance and digitization.
On the evening of 05 July, more than 150 participants from different scientific disciplines and institutions as well as a large number of representatives from the insurance industry, cantonal and federal administrations, and farmers’ organizations gathered at ETH Zurich to discuss recent scientific developments in the field of agricultural risk management. The event entitled “Managing Risk in Agriculture“ was a symposium on innovations in agricultural insurance and digitization, co-organized by the World Food System Center, the ETH Risk Center, and the ETH Zurich Agricultural Economic and Policy group of Prof. Robert Finger.
Agricultural production is characterized by a variety of risks, e.g. due to volatile weather, markets but also policy conditions. Assessing and managing risks is thus of key importance for an optimal decision-making, also in agricultural production. Increasingly climate variability is further accelerating uncertainty at all stages of value chains. Recent advances in Big Data are promising to provide opportunities and technologies to enhance risk management in agricultural production using high-resolution data from satellites, open data platforms and data from agricultural machines. A risk-based decision-making incorporating these advances will involve a common understanding among up and downstream companies, policy makers as well as finance and insurance professionals.
These topics were discussed in both presentations from industry and science and a lively panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Bastian Bergmann from the ETH Risk Center. Presenters included Dr. Hans Feyen (Swiss Re), Prof. Yann de Mey (Wageningen University & Research), Prof. Joshua Woodard (Cornell University), and Prof. Finger.
Managing Risk in Agriculture
The audience could pose their own questions during the panel discussion (Image: ETH Risk Center)
The panelists answer questions from the audience (Image: ETH Risk Center)
Dr. Hans Feyen from SwissRe presented the Re-Insurance perspective on Digitization in agricultural insurance and especially discussed the views and roles of a (re)insurer in that respect. Dr. Feyen showed the need to overcome information asymmetries between farmers and insurance companies and identified needs for better data as well as a better use of the available data. Download Download Dr. Feyen's presentation here (PDF, 2 MB)
Prof. Yann de Mey from Wageningen University presented insights in risk, risk management, and resilience in European agriculture. He especially presented the research vision of the Horizon 2020 project SURE-Farm (Towards SUstainable and REsilient EU FARMing systems, http://surefarmproject.eu/) that is coordinated by Wageningen University and also comprises research activities at the Agricultural Economic and Policy Group of ETH Zurich. An important conclusion drawn by Prof. De Mey was to put resilience in farming systems in a larger perspective. Resilience thinking should go beyond short-term robustness because also the adaptability and even transformability are important components of farming systems resilience. Download Download Prof. de Mey's presentation here (PDF, 3.4 MB)
Prof. Joshua Woodard from Cornell University presented recent activities related to the development of an open source, open data platform and applications for agricultural and environmental finance and insurance. The platform Ag-Analytics https://ag-analytics.org/ is an integrative tool bringing together various public datasets (e.g. on weather, soil and land use) and satellite information with farmers’ information on input use and yields. This platform creates a unique field-level database that supports farmers’ decision-making and enables novel insurance opportunities.
Prof. Finger presented the idea that farmers chose a risk management portfolio from a variety of available tools and highlighted the potential benefits of insurance solutions as part of such portfolio. New technologies and large publically available datasets (e.g. on crop phenology and weather) create massive opportunities to develop better, cheaper and more widely used insurance solutions. However, Prof. Finger also discussed the potential negative effects of the subsidization of agricultural insurances on the environment that need to be considered by policy makers. Download Download Prof. Finger's presentation here (PDF, 2.3 MB)
The WFSC, the ETH Risk Center, and the Agricultural Economic and Policy Group thank all for making this public event such an interesting discussion. Special thanks to our speakers Hans Feyen, Yann de Mey, Joshua Woodard and Robert Finger.
The event was featured in Bauren Zeitung (in German), with an interview with Prof. Robert Finger: external page https://www.bauernzeitung.ch/news-archiv/2018/den-acker-aus-dem-weltraum-beobachten
