Title:
In Kenya, Low-Cost Crop Insurance for Small Farmers
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Weather does not discriminate between large and
small farms. If it rains too much or too little,
crop insurance can pay for losses. Yet insurance
usually costs too much for a farmer with as little
as a hectare or two of land. But now a program
called Kilimo Salama, or safe farming, offers
low-cost insurance in parts of Kenya. The program is
offered by the Syngenta Foundation. The foundation
was established by the Swiss agricultural-chemical
maker Syngenta. Farmers register at businesses
taking part in the program and receive a policy
number through their mobile phone. Every time the
farmers buy seeds, fertilizer or other inputs, they
pay an extra five percent in addition to the price.
This extra cost is the insurance premium. The
farmers are paid back for the inputs if their crops
fail because of drought or flood.The program is
designed for maize and wheat farmers like Josephat
Langat. He owns a two-hectare farm near Eldoret in
western Kenya. He said: "In a case where we do not
have a lot of rainfall, it means we are going to
lose all the crops. But this insurance policy is
going to cover the farm inputs that we use in the
farms, so that is going to give us the certainty of
going back to the farms again if the rains do not
come."He buys his agricultural inputs at Maraba
Investments in Eldoret. About two hundred farmers
signed up for the insurance within the first two
weeks that it was offered there. Beatrice Kemboi is
a director of the business.She says every day she
and her workers register from five to ten farmers in
the program. When farmers buy their inputs, the
store worker uses a mobile phone camera to scan
barcode symbols that match the product. A text
message confirming the policy number and sale is
then sent automatically. The program also uses
solar-powered weather stations to record local
rainfall amounts. The data is sent to the UAP
Insurance Company. When there is crop failure
because of a drought or flood, farmers receive a
text message. It tells them to receive payment from
the business where they purchased their inputs.And
that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
You can read and listen to our reports at
voaspecialenglish.com. And you can add your
comments. We are also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
and iTunes at VOA Learning English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
