Crop-hail insurance

Crop-hail insurance pays for the destruction or impairment of a crop by hail, field by field, based on an in-field damage appraisal. It is the oldest form of crop cover. A hail insurer appeared in Germany in 1791 and another in France in 1799, and 19th-century French farm mutuals sold it alongside livestock mortality cover. Its staying power comes from the peril itself. Hail falls in swaths a few kilometers wide: from the same storm, one field comes out untouched and the next one is wiped out. The risk therefore pools well across a département, which frost and drought do not allow. The loss adjuster assesses damage on a sample of plants, derives a loss percentage, and applies it to the insured amount per hectare, often after a deductible of a few points. In the United States, crop-hail remains a private product with no federal subsidy, sold alongside and on top of federal program policies. In France, hail never fell under the agricultural calamities scheme, since it was insurable. A standalone hail policy does not in principle qualify for EU premium aid, which is reserved for multi-peril climate cover measuring loss against the Olympic average. Yet the peril weighs more than it used to. Hailstones above 5 cm are becoming more frequent in Europe, and hail cost French insurers several billion euros in 2022, mostly on vehicles and roofs. Not to be confused with hail on solar farms, an industrial property risk.