- Reports state farmers lose up to 90 per cent of their expected yield due to climate risks
- Insurance can help cushion smallholder farmers from crop and financial losses that occur as a result of climate change.
Image: AGATHA NGOTHO
Smallholder farmers in Kenya are benefiting from a climate-smart crop insurance scheme that combines satellite data and smartphone imagery.
Introduced by the Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise (ACRE Africa), the Picture Based Insurance (PBI) project is enhancing resilience to challenges posed by climate-related shocks.
The latest survey on agricultural insurance by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)shows that while the sector contributes close to 25 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), very few farmers are covered.
Kenya’s reliance on smallholder, rain-fed agriculture and its high poverty rates render the country particularly vulnerable to climate risks. Only two per cent of farmers depend on insurance to mitigate these risks
According to Lilian Waithaka of ACRE Africa, yields are traditionally quite low and climate change is not only increasing the incidence of pests and diseases but heightening the risk of more frequent extreme weather events.
“Reports state farmers lose up to 90 per cent of their expected yield due to climate risks,” she said.
Faced with such losses, many smallholder farmers are reluctant to invest in their farms and instead engage in unsustainable practices to try to save money.
"Many are keeping their children out of school, selling off productive assets, and reducing the quality of their diets,” Waithaka said.
Even so, insurance can help cushion smallholder farmers from crop and financial losses that occur as a result of climate change.
According to Waithaka, the three main prohibiting factors include affordability, trust and approach.
To resolve this, ACRE Africa is linking smallholder farmers to risk mitigation and climate adaptation solutions.
“The PBI project offers farmers an affordable, innovative, inclusive, climate-smart agriculture solution,” Waithaka said.
Farmers simply dial a USSD code and choose the type of crop they want to cover, after which they are automatically enrolled in the scheme.
To support PBI uptake and enhance trust levels around insurance, ACRE Africa has also established a network of champion farmers in Kenya.
These individuals are “key opinion shapers in the villages in which they reside,” explained Waithaka.
Two-thirds of champions are women – and it’s been found that female champions are more likely to successfully recruit new women farmers to the PBI scheme.
At the heart of the PBI, approach lies imagery, with photographs taken of farmers’ crops collected using satellites and smartphones – with champion farmers using an app called SeeItGrow.
The app takes images of registered farmers’ crops throughout the season, which are then used in the evaluation process at the end of the season.
The project has developed three different machine learning models to help process the images collected, classifying crops according to their growth stage, type of damage, and extent of the damage.
At the end of the season, a panel of experts – comprising insurance companies and agronomists – evaluate the images to give them a ‘score’, which forms the basis from which farmers can make claims.
Farmers who take out PBI are also supported in other climate-related aspects.
For instance, ACRE Africa continually provides farmers with training on how to protect their crops against climate shocks, connects them to companies that sell stress-tolerant seed varieties, and uses information services to encourage them to adhere to good agronomic practices.
ACRE Africa’s approach is proving successful. So far, the champion farmers have collected over 60,000 field images from over 7,300 farmers signed up for the PBI scheme.