AgriLogic, was awarded a contract in 2003 to design, develop and implement an innovative web-based toolset providing a straightforward way for producers to identify the available insurance policies that match the parameters of their operation and then compare the expected financial performance of each one under different weather and economic scenarios. Its focus is on the education and evaluation of crop insurance products as effective risk management tools. The goal of the InsuranceVision toolset is to help producers understand and analyze the various insurance programs within the context of each producer’s specific situation. This goal is achieved by combining risk management and crop insurance expertise with climate and economic data to provide producers with a powerful analysis environment.

The idea behind the system is to merge three major elements into a sophisticated risk analysis and risk mitigation decision support tool. The idea is that the system would allow the producer to assess the impact of insurance decisions (or lack thereof) under different yield and price scenarios. These yield and price scenarios would be derived from current climate and economic conditions and provided by sophisticated climate, yield, and econometric models. These climate models are developed via NASA Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) which measure over 16 variables such as rainfall, evapotranspiration, NDVI, and leaf area index. Use of NASA data from the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) will also streamline the data integration process, allowing update of seasonal yield forecasts throughout the growing season that may be monitored on an everyday basis. The result will be improved advice on crop insurance purchases and an “everyday useful” tool during the growing season to determine the need for additional risk management strategies. These risk management strategies can be further enhanced with the use of a hedging analysis tool provided within the existing insurance vision toolset. The hedging tool will allow for a comparison of alternative strategies using forward contracts, basis contracts, puts, calls and futures. Each component within the toolset can be used interactively or independently of each other toolset component.

In the Fall of 2009 the we will conduct publicity campaigns and focus group meetings to provide producer level feedback of the product. This will be a beta test and will facilitate further development of the final product, set for completion in November of 2010.

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