Present Situation And Countermeasures Of Agricultural Insurance In Our Country

Agriculture is an important pillar of our national economy, which plays a foundamental and strategic role in our society. The stability of agriculture is essential for the development of the national economy, and agricultural insurance is an important measure to ensure the stability and safety of agricultural production. Agricultural insurance is beneficial not only to the adjustment of the rural industrial structure, but also to the coordinated development of the national economy. It is a specific national policy on agriculture as well as the macro-control economy. Moreover, agricultural insurance plays an important role in keeping farmers’ income sustained, stable growth, spreading risks of agriculture and stabling rural social.Agricultural Insurance in China began in the1950s, had been interrupted in the middle, but began to recover in the early1980s. It gets rapid development and plays a significant role in agricultural production and rural economic life at this stage, since the relevant experiments achieved some success. The agriculture-related documents which have been put out by government for several years reflect the fact that the "three rural" issue is a high priority. The Chinese government is creating a favorable external condition for the rapid development of agricultural insurance. However, in the long term, some reasons including the low level of economic development, limited financial resources, lack of the government support, loopholes in the laws and regulations, such as system security problems, result in the lagging of the development of China’s agriculture insurance. The current situation has severely restricted agricultural insurance functions. The international cases show that agricultural insurance can protect domestic agriculture as an effective measure to WTO members. Many countries have established agricultural insurance plan that the representative ones include the United States, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Asian Development countries and so on. However, they create different system modes, because different countries have different backgrounds and purposes. The policy of agricultural insurance occupies a very important position in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other agricultural developed countries throughout their support and protection system, and this trend has continued to strengthen. By understanding and analyzing the theoretical and practical experience of these countries’agricultural insurance for several years, we should take some effective measures such as increasing government support for agricultural insurance, adopting "Low rates and high subsidies" policy, and establishing agricultural insurance agencies. We also should improve relevant legislations, to build our strong law system to protect agricultural insurance. By building agricultural reinsurance system, we can utilize it to develop the national economy.Combined with China’s national conditions and the experiments which are learnt from those successful western countries, the most important issues we faced are that how to establish and improve our agricultural insurance system and promote the sustainable development through institutional innovation, out of a rich agricultural insurance road with Chinese characteristics.