Insurance needs for olive growers in Europe due to climate change

As the nature of threats facing olive farmers changes, so is the insurance industry that underwrites the risk posed by those hazards. In the past, the ​“main risks for olive farming was not climatic, but more diseases (including parasites), price volatility and fraud (involving the re-assigning of olive locations),” an agricultural insurance insider told Olive Oil Times. More recently, several European insurers have been working to elevate the importance of climate-related changes throughout their underwriting and investment portfolios. This move has become more pertinent, especially in the agricultural sector, which is increasingly plagued by the changing climate and extreme weather events. According to research from Olive Oil Times, global olive oil production is set to decline for a second straight year in the 2023/24 crop year, falling to 2.4 million tons, largely due to drought in the Mediterranean basin. As a result, European insurance underwriters are issuing policies that ...