In a podcast, NPR's Planet Money (The Economy Explained), listeners are taken on a journey in Africa to meet with the continent's farmers and learn about common risks they face in their crop productions - "Farmers don't grow enough of the things they're best at growing." Episode 723 also focuses on index insurance and discusses how access to finance can affect the farmers' investment choice.

In an address to an audience at an Adaptation Futures 2016 plenary session in Rotterdam, UN Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands said financial services that are inclusive would enhance the vulnerable populations’ ability to escape poverty. Financial inclusion is particularly important for smallholder farmers. Without access to credit, they could become caught up in activities with declining productivity and incomes. Along with savings and remittances, insurance is an important financial instrument that helps smallholder farmers

The Government of Zambia has called on insurance firms to develop affordable weather index insurance products in the wake of climate change as they are part of the risk management mechanisms for crop protection among small-scale farmers, Zambia Daily Mail has reported. Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Given Lubinda said the effects of climate change are real, and Zambia is not excluded from the impact, evidenced by the negative impact of the El Niño phenomenon the country experiened during the 2015/16 farming season. “Therefore, farmers’ access to risk mitigation tools such as insurance

Panos Varangis, the World Bank Group's Global Lead for agricultural finance and agricultural insurance in the Finance and Markets Global Practice, was speaking at a World Bank event on index insurance in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic's Diario Libre reports. To an audience, Mr. Varangis was presenting index insurance as an alternative financial instrument that can protect agricultural producers in Dominican Republic from hurricanes, tropical storms, and floods. The country loses an average of US $450 million a year since 1961 by events associated with these types of disasters. Dominican

Subsistence farmers are often among the world’s most poor and they will need access to financial products if they are to adapt to climate change and the extreme drought, floods and storms it brings, said Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands during the 4th International Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Rotterdam on May 11, 2016. Her Majesty believes that financial services that are more inclusive and insurance innovations, such as index insurance, help reduce many smallholder farmers' vulnerability and increase their ability to escape poverty, and also cites the the Kilimo Salama

The World Bank has welcomed the government's partnership with local insurance companies in crop and livestock cover policies, saying they will benefit smallholder farmers.Country director for Kenya, Ms Diarietou Gaye, said the programme has the potential to positively impact the country's economic development since it will help increase production as well as producer incomes."The large majority of the poor in Kenya are farmers and it will enable them to adopt improved production processes to help break the poverty cycle of low investment and low returns," she said.The bank's Disaster Risk

NAIROBI, March 12, 2016- The Government of Kenya today launched the Kenya National Agricultural Insurance Program, which is designed to address the challenges that agricultural producers face when there are large production shocks, such as droughts and floods. The program, which is designed as a partnership between the government and the private sector, was developed with assistance from the World Bank Group and builds on the experience of similar programs in Mexico, India, and China. One program line will focus on livestock insurance, while another will focus on maize and wheat insurance.

Mr. Tanguy Touffut of AXA Corporate Solutions discusses the benefits of parametric insurance, which he sees as a promising solution for farmers and other weather-sensitive industries against climate-change effects. It is nothing new: climate change, a phenomenon in full effect, has many drastic consequences of all types for people, companies, and entire economies alike. It has been observed that weather extremes are increasing as a consequence of climate change. In January 2015, AXA Corporate Solutions entered into a partnership with the World Bank’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF). The