In the first three days of this week insurers in Latvia received insurance claim requests from more than 100 farms for 19 000 ha of ruined crops, according to estimates from LPKS LATRAPS and insurance cooperative VEREINIGTE HAGEL (VH Latvija).
The thunderstorm that hit Latvia at the beginning of the week ravaged farms in Zemgale and Kuzeme. Dobele was hit the hardest. The Farmers’ Parliament association’s vice-chairman of the board Maira Dzelzkalēja-Burmistre says there are four insurers that specialise in insuring crops. It is possible they may receive insurance claim requests for 25 000 ha of crops.
Dzelzkalēja-Burmistre stresses that the number of impacted farms keeps going up, because insurers keeps receiving new information about damages.
“It should be added that not all farmers have insured their crops. With that, we predict that farmers will not receive compensation for more or less the same area’s worth of destroyed crops. It will be very difficult for those farms to recover,” says the representative of the Farmers’ Parliament, adding that “people living in regions hit by the storm are unlikely to find locally-grown vegetables and fruits at local markets this year”.
Dzelzskalēja-Burmistre explains that a warning system is important for natural catastrophes so that people can prepare in time.
“This storm proved that the warning system in Latvia does not work as the one in Western Europe, where every resident is sent information about approaching danger on their phone. On the day of the storm there was no information about the direction the storm was moving into. There was only word about a possible storm in half of Latvia’s territories,” says the agriculture organisation’s representative.
According to her, it is confusing why sirens in Latvia remained quiet when the storm was at the country’s borders.
“As a result we have ruined buildings, damaged vehicles and cars, injured people and animals,” says Dzelzskalēja-Burmistre.
He explains that crisis management in this situation is unacceptably slow – several days have passed and there is still no appropriate coordination or understanding what the victims should do on their own and how the state or municipalities should help them.
Additionally, Dzelskalēja-Burmistre said it is necessary to move away from the practice of paying compensation, and farmers should be encouraged to take responsibility on their own by providing support in insuring their crops.
Crop insurance options should be expanded with opportunities to insure fruits, vegetables and corn.
“Both in Latvia and most of Europe crop insurance is subsidised. This year, however, support will cover less than 50% of insurance policy costs instead of 70%. Because this is an expensive form of insurance, only 20% of all crops are insured. We believe reduction of support would be acceptable only when the number of insured crops reaches at least 60% of crop territories,” says the Farmers’ Parliament’s representative.
According to her, for farmers in regions hit by the storm to survive, the government should come to the rescue with a low/no-interest working capital program for two to three years.
Also read: Latvian government will financially support residents recovering from recent thunderstorm