Abstract:

【Objective】The extensive pricing model of “one province, one crop, one premium rate” has brought about problems, such as adverse selection, moral risk and disorderly operation, which seriously restricts the healthy and sustainable development of agricultural insurance in China. Accurate rate pricing cannot be achieved without agricultural risk assessment. Insurance rate pricing cannot be separated from risk assessment. Launching agricultural production risk assessment is an important task to achieve accurate rate pricing for grain insurance and to accelerate the high-quality development of agricultural insurance. 【Method】Aiming at the three major grain crops (rice, wheat, and maize) in China, three kinds of risk data sources (yield data, disaster loss data, and insurance data) were collected and organized for a long time series. With yield data as the core, combined with disaster and insurance data, the risk assessment modeling was carried out, throughout the adjustment for underestimation of county-level risks and rank correlation of provincial-level risks, to calculate the pure risk loss rate of the three crops at the county level, and then to use the quantile method in risk zoning for the three crops and produce risk maps. 【Result】The rank correlation adjustment of provincial-level risks was mainly based on disaster risk results, followed by insurance risk results. After adjustment, the rank correlation coefficient for rice was increased from 0.610 to 0.766, wheat was increased from 0.547 to 0.748, and maize was increased from 0.576 to 0.760. After adjustment, the average underestimation coefficient for the three major grain crops nationwide was between 20% and 40%, indicating that the average degree of risk underestimation using county-level yield nationwide is between 20% and 40%, with maize having a higher underestimation coefficient than rice and wheat. At the provincial level, the production risks of the three crops in Heilongjiang were all at an extremely high level. The production risks of rice and wheat in Inner Mongolia, rice and maize in Jilin and Liaoning, and wheat in Shanxi were at an extremely high level. At the county level, the extremely high risk of rice production (pure risk loss rate>4.4%) was mainly concentrated in the majority of planting counties in the three northeastern provinces, as well as in the planting counties bordered with the northeastern provinces in Inner Mongolia. The extremely high risk of wheat production (pure risk loss rate>6.3%) was mainly concentrated in the majority of wheat planting counties in Inner Mongolia. The extremely high risk of maize (pure risk loss rate>6.9%) production was mainly concentrated in the maize planting counties bordered with Inner Mongolia and the three northeastern provinces, Shanxi and Shaanxi, as well as most of the maize planting counties in Liaoning, Anhui, and Jiangxi. From the 833 major grain producing counties in China, the proportion of extremely high and high-risk counties of maize was the highest (accounting for 28.1%), followed by rice (accounting for 25.1%), and wheat was the lowest (accounting for 17.2%), indicating that the overall risk of maize was relatively high, while wheat was the lowest. 【Conclusion】The study revealed the magnitude and regional differences of production risks of the three major grain cops. In terms of national average levels, maize had the highest risk (average pure risk loss rate = 5.0%), followed by wheat (average pure risk loss rate = 3.1%), while rice had the lowest risk (average pure risk loss rate = 2.6%). In terms of spatial differences, rice had the highest risks in the northeast and central-south regions, wheat had the highest risks in North China and East China, and maize had the highest risks in North China, Northeast China, and East China. The spatial differences in risks for other levels of rice, wheat, and maize were also inconsistent.

Key words: agricultural insurance, production risks, risk assessment, multi-source data, three major grain crops, pure risk loss rate, risk map