20 Nov Tree Insurance: A new initiative in India
वृक्ष बीमा: भारत में एक नई पहल Agriculture production and farm incomes in India are frequently affected by natural disasters such as droughts, floods, cyclones, storms, landslides and earthquakes. Susceptibility of agriculture to these disasters is compounded by the outbreak of epidemics and man made disasters such as fire, sale of spurious seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, price crashes etc. To overcome these uncontrollable factors, agriculture insurance came to life. Agricultural Insurance is a means of protecting the agriculturist against financial losses due to uncertainties that may arise agricultural losses arising from named or all unforeseen risks beyond their control (AIC, 2008). In this ever changing era of climate change, everything has become uncertain. To fight/adapt to these climate related vagaries, scientists are advocating to adopt climate smart agricultural (CSA) practices. One of the best CSA practice considered is agroforestry, a sustainable land use system wherein farmers grow agricultural crops along with certain tree species either simultaneously or in some spatial pattern. Agroforestry plays a vital role in the Indian economy by way of tangible and intangible benefits.At present agroforestry meets almost half of the demand of fuel wood,two thirds of the small timber, 70–80%wood for plywood, 60% of raw material for paper pulp and 9–11% of the green fodder requirement of livestock, besides meeting the...