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Agricultural insurance is nevertheless a growing business driven by increasing commercialisation of agriculture, international trade, and foreign direct investment, and the development of new insurance products. The changing economic environment has also triggered a renewed interest in crop and agricultural insurance programmes and products among governments and development practitioners.
The precursor of the present publication, the AGS Bulletin 86 - "Strategies for Crop Insurance Planning", was intended to serve as a guide for the design of crop insurance programmes or for improving already existing insurance operations. Although the book was written more than 10 years ago and some of the case studies may not be anymore up to date, FAO believes that the identified 11 key issues for crop insurance design described in Chapter 2 of the publication are still valid today. The present publication is intended to be a supplement to the AGS Bulletin 86 and in particular to provide insight into some of the more recent developments in terms of new insurance products and programmes. Despite the limited experience with some of these products, FAO believes that they will create an opportunity to offer practical solutions to many of the barriers to classic crop insurance for small-scale, dispersed farmers in less developed areas of the world