The best thing farmers can do for peace of mind is to ensure their operations against risks. Agnovate creates and provides cutting-edge crop production insurance products that cover a range of stakeholders in the agricultural supply chain, including primary producers and corporate clients like financiers, input suppliers, processors, and storage facilities.
JG Shields, the co-founder of Agnovate, shares more about soil moisture insurance and how it is beneficial to farmers.
“Soil moisture as we know, even in our own private gardens, is the most fundamental resource for any seed to germinate and the plant to grow. The same with any commercial farming operation and the difference between irrigation and rainfed is that nature irrigates the soil in a rainfed environment,” Shields says.
Understanding soil moisture
In any critical stage of a plant’s existence – from germination right through where the plant matures – soil moisture is vital for the plant’s growth and production performance.
Soil moisture is mainly a function of rain, but it is not completely correlated with rain. This is because lots of rain can fall in a very short space of time, however, the rain will run off the soil and it will not penetrate the soil.
“So, the rainwater is captured by the soil and that becomes available for the plant to utilize. Soil moisture is not the only important natural resource. We also have resources such as heat units and sunlight but there is a very high correlation between soil moisture and the eventual performance of any plant that includes the cash crops farmers are planting,” Shields explains.
Moisture levels across South Africa
South Africa is a very diverse country from a natural resource perspective, and there are areas with high rainfall and areas with low rainfall. In both of those areas, there is soil with different characteristics and production potential.
“We can have soils in a fairly dry arid area where rainfall is fairly scarce, but the soil type can be of such quality that it keeps soil moisture captured for quite a long period,” he says.
In South Africa, with relatively low rainfall in most of the rainfed production areas, we are very dependent on soil moisture.
Desired soil moisture levels are achieved in the soil partly by very good farming practices that farmers apply and therefore they overcome the risk of moisture deficiencies in the soil.
However, Agnovate is not in control of rain as well as farming practices in the country, says Shields.
“We must make sure that we mitigate the risks of too little soil moisture at critical times much better.”
Risks for farmers
It’s important to distinguish between rainfed farming operations and irrigation farming operations. In the case of irrigation where you are dependent on a water source from a pump, energy is needed from the energy supplier, resulting in risks such as load shedding being problematic.
“We can’t cover load shedding risk with soil moisture insurance because the control of the irrigation source itself is within the ability of humans. And in rainfed areas, the risk is whether the climate plays in our favour or not.”
The distribution of rainfall throughout the season is critical and the real risk that farmers face is that rain may fall at the incorrect period.
“We may have a very wet preseason and we may have a mid-summer drought or even the other way around,” Shield says.
At the end of the day, soil moisture can either be too little or even too much. It all depends on how the rain falls and what the farmer’s requirement is at the time.
Mitigating instability or volatility
And that all have an impact on the performance of the plant, Shield adds. “In the end, it is very important that we mitigate that volatility or instability, when and how much rain falls during critical times through other mechanisms such as soil moisture insurance.”
The beauty of soil moisture insurance is that it doesn’t take into account any specific crops, where you are farming, or how big or small a farmer you are.
“As long as you own a piece of land and you are dependent on soil moisture that is rainfed, we can ensure that. It includes the production of cash crops, but it can also include natural grazing in areas where people are livestock farmers.”
Advice to farmers
There are many benefits to Agnovate soil moisture insurance, says Shields. First of all, the product uses open-source data for modelling and measurement, and it is a very transparent module if people want to do their own background checks or reviews on how the module works.
Shields adds that there are several farmers that Agnovate have insured in a widespread area. “What is beautiful about it, in all those areas we had claims scaling from a small portion of the insured value to substantial amounts.”
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