CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF NATURAL DISASTER LOSSES IN POLISH AGRICULTURE

Agricultural production risk is of special nature due to a great number of hazards, relative weakness of production entities on the market and high ambiguity which is greater than in industrial production. Natural disasters occurring very frequently, at simultaneous low percentage of insured farmers, cause damage of such sizes that force the state to organise current financial aid (for instance in the form of preferential natural disaster loans). This aid is usually not sufficient. On the other hand, regional diversity of the risk level does not positively affect the development of insurance. From the perspective of insurance companies and policymakers it becomes highly important to investigate the spatial structure of losses in agriculture caused by natural disasters. The purpose of the research is to classify the 16 Polish voivodeships into clusters in order to show differences between them according to the criterion of level of damage in agricultural farms caused by natural disasters. On the basis of the cluster analysis it was demonstrated that 11 voivodeships form quite a homogeneous group in terms of size of damage in agriculture (the value of damage in cultivations and the acreage of destroyed cultivations are two most important factors determining affiliation to the cluster), however, the profile of loss occurring in other five voivodeships has a very individual course and requires separate handling in the actuarial sense. It was also proved that high value of losses in agriculture in the absolute sense in given voivodeships do not have to mean high vulnerability of agricultural farms from these voivodeships to natural risks.