The central government is planning to come up with a "more farmer friendly" crop insurance scheme in the next two months, an agriculture ministry official said here on Friday.
The proposed scheme was aimed at enhancing the insurance coverage in the agriculture sector and helping farmers in mitigating the loss to their crops from different reasons, the ministry's joint secretary Ashish Bhutani said.
"We are working on restructuring of present crop insurance schemes and likely to come up with a restructured crop insurance scheme in next two months and it will be more farmer friendly," the official told the media at an event organised by the PHD Chambers.
Minister of State for Agriculture Mohanbhai Kundariya, who was also present at the meeting, said there was a need to explore possibilities of exchange of ideas between the government and private insurance players to develop an effective, integrated and affordable insurance package for farmers.
The minister said: "The need of the hour is to make agriculture a risk-free activity by protecting farmers from financial and crop yield risks."
Kundariya said the government has been implementing three major insurance schemes such as National Agriculture Insurance Scheme, Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme and Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme.
"However, due to lack of awareness among the farmers on risk mitigation effects of insurance and inadequate enthusiasm of bankers and other financial intermediaries, these schemes have not made large impact even through these insurance products have tremendous risk mitigating capabilities," he said.
