WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-22 Time: 15:00:03 Posted By: News Poster
By Steve Mbogo
The first group of farmers has benefited from a farm inputs insurance scheme.
Farmers in Siakago, Embu District, received insurance payouts on Tuesday marking the first pay by Kilimo Salama.
The 135 farmers were paid after weather stations registered that rainfall for the season was below average.
“We keep our promise and pay out fast,” said James Wambugu of UAP, one of the partners in the programme. Others are Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, and Safaricom.The farmers were paid less than two weeks after the end of their insurance contracts, said Mr Wambugu.
The programme offers small scale farmers an opportunity to pay a five per cent insurance premium on their purchase of seeds or fertiliser.
The insurance policy protects their investment by calculating losses incurred when insufficient or even excess rains are detected by a nearby weather station.
The weather during the long rain season has been good, hence the insurance payouts were low or none at all.
The weather in the short rain season is projected to be poor, so farmers should keep insuring in order to protect themselves against the risk, said Mr Wambugu.
“Our focus is to ensure that these products are as widely available as possible across the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, Kilimo Salama partners will continue discussions with the farmers to understand challenges facing them and develop products and services that enrich their lives and shield them and their harvests from risk.
Currently, only about half of Kenyan farmers invest in improved seeds and nutrition for their crops.
A key reason for the low demand is fear that poor conditions, such as the 2009 drought that destroyed harvests, will render their investment worthless, robbing them of both their crops and their savings.
Jennifer Mbiro, a 39-year-old mother of four, said because she did not trust insurance she only insured fertiliser and not the seeds.
“My payout is small. This season I’ve insured my seeds, fertilisers as well as some chemicals that I’m trying for the first time. I now know that it is worth insuring all my inputs.”
The payouts issued were commensurate with the farmers’ projected losses.
For example, a 15 per cent decrease in yield, based on rain shortfalls recorded at weather stations, triggered a payment of 15 per cent.
Largest payout
The largest payout was Sh2,500. That is the equivalent of about 12 kilos of high-yield maize seed, which is enough to plant one acre.
“This is how the system is supposed to work to compensate farmers for any harvests that falls below what they would expect. In this case, the projected losses, and thus the payouts, were fairly small. In seasons with less rain the payout could be far greater,” said Marco Ferroni, the executive director of Syngenta Foundation.
Not all farmers participating in the programme received payment.
“The programme is designed to have enough weather stations so that we can detect variations in rainfall over relatively small areas,” said Mr Ferroni. “The fact that not all farmers received payments shows that the system can distinguish who suffered damage and who did not. We hope that this high degree of accuracy will attract more farm input companies to participate.”
The programme covers 11,000 farmers in areas such as Bungoma, Busia, Eldoret, Embu, Nanyuki, Oyugis, and Homa Bay.
Syngenta Foundation and its partners are looking into expanding to other parts of the country next year.
Farmers can buy Kilimo Salama cover from local agro-dealers.
The five per cent surcharge translates into about Sh9 to insure a one-kilogramme bag of improved, high yield maize seed and Sh25 to insure a 10-kilogramme bag of fertiliser.
Farmers’ investment
To cover the full 10 per cent premium needed to fund the programme, agro companies participating in the programme, MEA Fertilisers and Syngenta East Africa Limited, match the farmers’ investment.
Agro-dealers registered and trained by Kilimo Salama have been equipped with a camera phone, which they use to scan a bar code at the time of input purchase, which registers the policy with UAP Insurance via Safaricom’s mobile data network.
This innovative application, developed by Syngenta, then sends a text (SMS) message to the farmer’s mobile phone confirming the insurance policy.
When data from a particular weather station indicates that rain shortage or other extreme conditions (including excessive rains) are likely to affect harvest, farmers automatically receive payouts directly via Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money transfer service.
Original date published: 22 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009220546.html?viewall=1