Extension of Crop Insurance Schemes

• 04 Jan 2025

Source: TH 

Why in News? 

The Union Cabinet has approved critical measures to support Indian farmers, including the extension of a special subsidy for Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) fertilizers and the continuation of crop insurance schemes until 2025-26. 

What are Recent Key Measures to Support Indian Farmers? 

• Crop Insurance Scheme: The Union Cabinet approved the continuation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) till 2025-26. 
• Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP): It approved extending the one-time special package on DAP beyond the Nutrient Based Subsidy from 1^st January, 2025 till further orders. 
  • It ensures affordable DAP fertilizers for farmers in Kharif and Rabi 2024-25 despite global market volatility. 
• Fund for Innovation and Technology (FIAT): It approved the creation of FIAT with a corpus of Rs 824.77 crore for funding technological initiatives under the scheme namely, YES-TECH and WINDS for increasing transparency and claim calculation and settlement. 
  • Yield Estimation System using Technology (YES-TECH): YES-TECH uses remote sensing technology for yield estimation with minimum 30% weightage to technology based yield estimates. 
  • Weather Information and Network Data Systems (WINDS): WINDS aims to install automatic weather stations at the block level and rain gauges at the panchayat level, increasing network density fivefold for hyper-local weather data. 

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)  

• About: It is a crop insurance scheme to protect farmers from financial losses due to unforeseen crop failures like rainfall, temperature, frost, humidity etc. 
• Aim: It is a central sector scheme and provides comprehensive crop insurance from pre-sowing to post-harvest period. 
• Coverage: It covers food crops (cereals, millets and pulses), oilseeds and annual commercial/annual horticultural crops. 
  • All farmers including sharecroppers and tenant farmers growing notified crops in the notified areas are eligible for coverage. 
• Premium: Farmers pay a premium of 2% for Kharif crops, 1.5% for Rabi crops, and 5% for commercial horticulture crops under the scheme.  

 Note: PMFBY relies on actual crop loss assessment to provide compensation to farmers for losses due to natural calamities, pests, or diseases. In contrast, RWBCIS compensates farmers based on deviations from predefined weather parameters such as rainfall, temperature, humidity, and wind speed. 

• RWBCIS uses these weather parameters as a proxy for crop yields to estimate and compensate for deemed crop losses, without requiring direct field-level assessment. 

 

 UPSC Civil Services Examination Previous Year Question (PYQ) 

Q. With reference to ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’, consider the following statements: (2016)

1. Under this scheme, farmers will have to pay a uniform premium of two percent for any crop they cultivate in any season of the year.
2. This scheme covers post-harvest losses arising out of cyclones and unseasonal rains.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct? 

(a) 1 only 

(b) 2 only 

(c) Both 1 and 2 

(d) Neither 1 nor 2 

Ans: (b)