Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (Central:State Share, 90:10) aims at supporting sustainable production in agriculture sector by way of providing compensation to farmers suffering crop loss/ damage arising out of unforeseen events, stabilizing farmers income to ensure their continuance in farming, encouraging farmers to adopt innovative and modern agricultural practices and ensuring flow of credit to the agriculture sector which will attribute to food security, crop diversification, enhancing growth and competitiveness of agriculture sector besides protecting farmers from production risks.
It is a centrally sponsored scheme to compensate the losses occurring due to natural calamities like natural fire, lightening, storm, hailstorm, cyclone, typhoon, tempest, hurricane, tornado, drought, dry spells, pests/ diseases etc. and localized calamities and the post-harvest losses for crops lying in the field for drying purpose within two weeks of the harvesting. Four major crops of the State viz. Maize, Paddy, Wheat &Barley are covered under this scheme.
The scheme is optional for all categories of loanee and non-loanee farmers. The loanee farmers who have availed seasonal crop loans, are to submit their option in writing to the bank at-least seven days prior to the cut off date for enrolment for the respective seasons if they do not want to insure their crops under this scheme otherwise their premium gets deducted. The insurance charges (premium) for the farmers have been fixed as 2% for Kharif season and 1.5 % for Rabi season. Rest of the cost of premium is borne by the Government. The compensation is worked out on the basis of the crop cutting experiment estimates of yield (less than average yield for last 5 years) for the reference unit (Tehsil/ Sub-Tehsil).
Besides this, there is a Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme for vegetables under which compensation is given to the insured farmers of the notified area on the basis of prevailing weather perils viz. conditions of temperature, rainfall, dry spell , disease congenial days cover and add-on cover for hailstorm which are harmful for the crop during growth period as notified by the experts. RWBCIS is notified for the selected blocks. The insurance charges (Premium) for farmers have been fixed as 5% of the insured amount and rest of the cost is borne by Government. During kharif season, Tomato, Ginger, Peas, Potato, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Broccoli and Capsicum crops are covered and during Rabi season, Tomato, Potato, Capsicum, Garlic, Cabbage, Cauliflower and Peas are covered under weather based crop insurance scheme.
Till date, claims to the tune of Rs. 96.24 Crores have been given to 4,98,738 farmers w.e.f. Kharif 2016 to Kharif 2022.