FoA 250: Helping Smallholder Farmers Manage Risk with Sonu Agrawal of Weather Risk Management Services

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thanks to the</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">FieldWork</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">podcast for sponsoring this episode. Visit</span> <a href= "http://www.fieldwork.org"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">www.FieldWork.org</span></a> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">to learn more. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We talk a lot about the types of technologies that are geared towards larger operations, but what’s out there that has the potential to really improve the lives of small farmers, especially of those in developing countries. We have a really interesting example of one of these innovations in this episode.</span> <a href="https://wrmsglobal.com"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Weather Risk Management Services</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">is an India-based company that collects data to help producers manage their risks. The company started off as offering just crop insurance products, which is still a big part of their business, but they’ve also expanded into products that incentivize and reward farmers for using risk management strategies. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In other words, a farmer pays a premium and agrees to certain farming practices. In return they are provided a guaranteed yield, and paid if their yield drops below that threshold. This helps take away the risk of adopting new practices.</span> <a href="https://wrmsglobal.com"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Weather Risk Management Services</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">has worked with over 30,000 farmers in India already, and hopes to grow to one million farmers in the next five years. Founder Sonu Agrawal joins us to share the process, goals and impacts of the company.</span></p> <p><strong><em>“So in many developing countries … not only in India, but several countries in Asia and Africa, there is very low or no access to crop insurance contracts. And since there is no crop insurance, access to finance is also a big chall