Online Reporter
Obert Chifamba
Agri-Insight
A DRY start, followed by a deluge.
This aptly sums up Zimbabwe’s 2025/26 cropping season, which comprised an October–November 2025 drought, then wet conditions, creating simultaneous drought and waterlogging risks — a clear case for expanded crop insurance.
This was a season of extremes. The parched October to November stretch in 2025 gave way to wet conditions, putting crops at risk from both drought and floods, duly highlighting the need for farmers to take up crop insurance as an essential protection against such hazards.
Either way, the farmer found himself at the epicentre of the dual threats of drought and flooding, which made crop insurance essential.
However, indications on the ground point to a very worrying scenario in which estimates show that between three and four percent of the country’s smallholder farmers, mostly those producing crops under contract arrangements, insure their crops most of the time.
This effectively makes crop insurance coverage among the smallholder bracket extremely low. And while some small-scale tobacco farmers are insured through contract farming requirements, overall uptake for food crops is minimal probably due to limited awareness, high premium costs, and a lack of tailored products. Many farmers cannot afford the premiums.
On the global scale, it is estimated that less than 20 percent of smallholder farmers have insurance coverage for crops or livestock, which leaves millions of farmers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa—where coverage is often less than three percent exposed to extreme weather and total livelihood loss.
Despite producing 46 percent of the world’s food, many cannot afford or access traditional insurance products.
The Microinsurance Networks attributes this low insurance penetration rate to several factors. In regions like sub-Saharan Africa, penetration is particularly low, with estimates suggesting less than three percent of smallholder farmers there have insurance.
There is also an estimated demand for US$60 billion to US$80 billion in insured value for smallholders in developing countries. The beauty about insuring crops is that when farmers do so, they are more likely to invest in higher-return, productive, and sustainable farming methods.
On the one hand, general lack of awareness on the importance of insuring crops can also not be ruled out on the contributory factors for the low uptake of this crucial cover. It seems many smallholders are not aware of the existence or benefits of insurance products while for some it can be to market distrust.
It is a fact that many smallholder farmers often do not believe that insurance companies will pay out in cases of losses due to various causes. This may be resulting from previous unpalatable experiences on personal levels or other farmers they know and share information with.
Such a scenario requires reinvigorated efforts to explain and convince the farmers that such experiences could have happened in isolation or circumstances leading to that had been addressed.
The farmer’s mind is like a copper kettle – give it a dent and you cannot efface the mark. They always make reference to sad memories each time they are faced with making important decisions that, however, have the potential to explode in their faces.
It is also assumed that insurance companies might also be facing logistical challenges or just reluctant to go out meeting farmers and marketing their products effectively. Of course, there is the high costs associated with marketing products and educating farmers on the need to take insurance policies. This also limits the availability of insurance products to farmers.
In Zimbabwe most of the insured smallholder farmers are among those that produce tobacco under contract arrangements, which makes insurance a mandatory contract requirement.
Additionally, the high reliance on subsistence farming where non-contracted crops are rarely insured has left many such farmers unable to see the need to insure crops or even seek information on the importance of insuring their cropping enterprises.
It is, however, refreshing to note that Government is working towards increasing farmers’ appreciation of the value of insurance cover. This has been demonstrated in its push to have all beneficiaries of its Pfumvudza/Intwasa (climate-proofed) programmes insured against climate-related risks, something the Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC) has even applauded.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has since acknowledged that most of Zimbabwe’s 1, 5 million smallholder farmers are still subsistence producers, which makes widespread adoption of traditional insurance difficult in the absence of initiatives like the government-supported or index-based insurance.
IPEC and the Insurance Council of Zimbabwe (ICZ) pushed for weather-indexed insurance, where payments are triggered by rainfall data rather than physical damage assessments. This was deemed necessary for smallholders (such as those in Umguza), Matabeleland North, to build resilience against erratic rainfall.
Farmers under the Umguza Smallholder Resilience (May 2025) in Ward 17 (Woolendale) moved to adopt insurance to counter recurring droughts and pests. Success stories from this area showed that insured farmers were better equipped to “restart” after climate-induced losses compared to those without coverage.
Weather-Index Insurance (WII) also turned into a haven for most smallholder farmers in the current 2025/26 season probably driven by the fact that pay outs are triggered by predefined rainfall levels rather than individual harvest assessments. Farmers in drought-prone areas received compensation even if they suffered total crop failure.
But, despite the low rate of penetration and uptake of insurance cover in other parts of the country, there appears to be a growing willingness among farmers to adopt insurance if coverage and accessibility are improved.
It may be hard to tell exactly what is motivating the change in perception but incidents like the destruction of a tobacco crop at Broakmead Farm in Goromonzi, Mashonaland East, last year stick out like a sore thumb – a stark reminder of farmers’ vulnerabilities in the absence of insurance cover.
This incident has been widely adopted as a case study of the dangers of not insuring crops with the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) using it to emphasise the importance of insuring crops to protect farmers from sudden, unexpected losses that can wipe out entire crop investments.
The 2024/25 season also stands out as a perfect example of term in which the relevance of crop insurance came to the fore. It was marked by a catastrophic El Niño-induced dry spell in February 2024, leaving 40 percent of crops in poor state while 60 percent was written off.
Essentially, this demonstrated that without insurance, farmers face total livelihoods loss, making cover a key tool for “restarting” after a bad patch or season.
As a matter of fact, the 2025/26 season proved that crop insurance is no longer elective, but a crucial safety net against droughts in the early season and potential floods in the later part, thanks to the term’s intense climate variability.
