State of the Sector: Agri-Insurance for Smallholder Farmers

In 2018, ISF Advisors, in partnership with the Syngenta Foundation, published Protecting Growing Prosperity: Agricultural Insurance in the Developing World. Alongside the release of that report, more than 100 industry stakeholders convened to consider solutions for maximizing the uptake and impact of insurance for smallholder farming households. However, since that time, the climate crisis has rapidly escalated and the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted market dynamics for smallholder farmers. These trends called for a new convening and reflection process for the sector. 

To that end, this 2022 State of the Sector update was commissioned by a new partnership of donors—including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Syngenta Foundation, FSD Africa, and Swiss Re Foundation—and written by ISF Advisors with support from the Microinsurance Network. The findings of this report were shared and debated in a virtual industry convening of over 130 stakeholders in January 2022. Key ideas and reactions from these discussions have been captured in this report, which sets out to: 

• Take stock of the current state of agri-insurance for smallholder households, distilling what has changed in the sector since 2018; 
• Introduce new ways of thinking about the sector in the form of four deep dives; and 
• Propose a set of priority areas to guide work over the next 5 years. 

We hope that this research will continue to support the insights, partnerships and investments needed to respond to the climate crisis, with smallholder farmers at the center of the action agenda.