Agricultural insurance: Serbian and foreign experiences

The subject of consideration in this paper are current experiences in agricultural insurance at the global level, within the European Union and in the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The purpose of the research is the analysis of foreign experiences in order to propose guidelines for the development of agricultural insurance in Serbia. The paper uses the desk research method, descriptive, comparative and analysis and synthesis methods. Agricultural insurance is a type of property insurance and includes crop insurance (crop and fruit insurance) and animal insurance. The importance of agricultural insurance is manifold, and the need for its development is particularly pronounced in the conditions of increasingly pronounced climate changes. In Serbia, agricultural insurance has not been developed despite the existence of subsidies (regression) of insurance premiums, which have been paid continuously since 2006. The percentage amounts of agricultural insurance premium subsidies have been increasing since 2019. Even so, in 2023, only 5.4% of the total number of registered agricultural holdings achieved the right to agricultural insurance premium regressions, and the share of the total agricultural insurance premium in the total non-life insurance premium was only 4.98%. In order to develop this type of insurance in the Republic of Serbia, the author proposes the application of the „partially mandatory agricultural insurance“ model and, to that end, passing a law that would define the obligation. The essence of this model is the obligation of agricultural insurance for all users of a state resource: state subsidies, loans with subsidized interest and lease of state agricultural land. Applying the proposed model would provide additional sources for financing agriculture, which is an equally important development incentive.