Crop production Sustainability in West Bengal: Risk proneness and crop insurance- A way forward

For estimating the risk and determining the suitable crop insurance plan, the time series district wise area, production and productivity data for considerable numbers of years (1983-84 to 2010-11) were used. The distribution of yield has been studied and it was observed that in almost all the crops grown in West Bengal, the crop yield follows normal distribution. However the yield of sugarcane did not follow normal distribution. On the basis of extent of short fall in yield the districts have been classified as low, medium and high risky for growing a particular crop with respective crop insurance premium rates.The study indicated that the district wise risk determination is more appropriate than the state wise risk determination. The crop insurance premium rate for all the crops under study have been determined for the crops having high and medium risk in the districts. In case of sugarcane MPD method for premium determination have been used as the yield did not followed normal distribution. The premium rate varied from 1.7% to 13.4% in rice crop and 1.9% to 3.6% for wheat crop depending upon districts and the type of crop at 90% indemnity level.