ABSTRACT
Various factors such as the small size of landholdings, uncertainties of climatic conditions, fluctuating nature of agricultural commodity prices, and resource pull of urban centres have made the agricultural sector lose its shine in India. Consequently, Indian youth is now yearning towards non-farm based employment, due to inherent risk and adverse impact associated with agriculture from natural disasters. It is true that natural disasters like drought, floods can not be done away with. Further, climate change may increase their intensity and frequency also.
The trend of moving away from agriculture could have adverse impacts in long run in any economy. To mitigate such a trend, the Government of India, with twin objectives of making agriculture remunerative and also to make agriculture sustainable, has introduced Prime Minster’s Crop Insurance Scheme (PMFBY) with effect from 2016-17.
Karnataka State with varied agro-climatological regions is known for wide varieties of crops. In rainfed northern parts of the state, Maize, Jowar, lentils dominate while in irrigated parts southern parts of the state, Paddy, Sugarcane dominate the cropping pattern. Drought is the notorious disaster that the state is frequently experiences and all north interior districts are prone to drought. Some regions of the River Krishna command area are prone to floods. Primary data from the farmers affected by these disasters varied from satisfactory to averse to the scheme and in this paper, we would like to present the efficacy of risk transfer measures such as crop insurance as a strategy for disaster risk reduction.
