The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was launched in 2016 to support production in agriculture by facilitating an affordable crop insurance product. This scheme provides farmers with comprehensive risk cover for their crops from pre-sowing to post-harvest stage against all non-preventable natural risks.

It is being implemented across all states and UTs and has completed eight crop seasons. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoA&FW) endeavoured to make this scheme more transparent, effective, and auto-administration driven for minimising manual interventions and eliminating the usage of different methodologies for implementation and execution on the ground.

The Agricultural Insurance Company of India implements this scheme. The PMFBY covers only natural disasters such as hail, drought, famine, etc. If the crop is damaged due to any other reason, the insured sum will not be provided.

Objectives of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

• To provide financial assistance and support to farmers suffering from crop damage or loss arising out of unforeseen events.
• To stabilise the income of farmers for ensuring continuance in farming. 
• To encourage the farmers to adopt modern and innovative agricultural practices.
• To ensure crop diversification, credit-worthiness of the farmers, enhance growth and competitiveness of the agriculture sector and protect the farmers from production risks.

Eligibility Criteria Under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

Every farmer, including sharecroppers and tenant farmers growing the notified crops, are eligible for insurance coverage under this scheme. All farmers can obtain voluntary coverage, including Crop Loan Account or Crop Kisan Credit Card (KCC) holders whose credit limit is not renewed.

Insurance Coverage Under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The PMFBY provides insurance covers to the following risks and crops: 

Coverage of Crops

The food crops such as millets, cereals and pulses, oilseeds and annual commercial or annual horticultural crops are covered under this scheme. Additionally, the pilots for coverage can be obtained for those commercial crops or perennial horticultural for which standard methodology for yield estimation is available.

Coverage of Risks and Exclusions

Basic Cover: The basic cover under the PMFBY covers the risk of loss of yield to the standing crop (sowing to harvesting). The risk insurance covers yield losses due to non-preventable risks like dry spells, drought, inundation, disease attack, flood, landslides, storm, natural fire due to lightning, cyclone and hailstorm.

Prevented Sowing/Germination/Planting Risk: If the insured area is prevented from sowing/germination/planting due to deficit rainfall or adverse climatic or seasonal conditions, the insured crops are eligible for indemnity claims on the insured sum. 

Mid-Season Adversity: If losses occur due to adverse seasonal conditions during the crop season viz. prolonged dry spells, floods and severe drought etc., where the expected yield during the season will likely be less than 50% of the normal yield, then immediate relief to the insured farmers is provided in case of occurrence of the above crop risks. 

Post-Harvest Losses: The post-harvest losses coverage is available only up to a maximum period of two weeks from harvesting for the crops that are required to be dried in cut and spread or small bundled condition depending on the requirement after harvesting against specific perils of cyclonic rains, hailstorm and unseasonal rains. 

Localised Calamities: Localised calamities cover the loss or damage to notified insured crops resulting from the occurrence of localised risks of landslide, hailstorm, cloud burst, inundation and natural fire due to lightning that affects the isolated farms in the notified area.

General Exclusions: The losses arising out of malicious damage, war and nuclear risks and other preventable risks are excluded from the insurance cover under this scheme.

Sum Insured and Premium Under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The crop-wise sum insured is notified and decided by the State. The insured sum changes from the first year or season in the subsequent year or season as per the changes in the Scale of Finance or Minimum Support Prices (MSP) or Farm-gate price available for the notified crops.

The farmers have to pay the premium amount to obtain insurance under this scheme. The premium amount under PMFBY is lower than the premium amount under the Pradhan Mantri Bima Yojana and other crop insurance schemes. 

The premium amount under PMFBY that is paid by the farmers is 2% of the sum insured for the Kharif crop, 1.5% of the sum insured for the Rabi Crop and 5% of the sum insured for the annual commercial and horticultural crops.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana Application Procedure

The farmers can apply for PMFBY both online and offline. The online application process is as follows: 

• The farmers need to go to the PMFBY website and click on the Registration Link.
• The farmers need to fill in the ‘Register for New Farmer User’ form that contains the details of farmer details, residential details, account details and ID details. 
• On submitting the ‘Register for New Farmer User’ form, the farmer’s account will be created on the PMFBY website. 
• The farmers need to sign in to the PMFBY website and fill in the ‘Crop Insurance Scheme’ application form.
• After filling and submitting the ‘Crop Insurance Scheme’ application form, the application process is complete.  

The offline application for PMFBY is as follows:

• The farmers need to visit the insurance company and fill the ‘Crop Insurance Scheme’ application form.
• After filling the ‘Crop Insurance Scheme’ application form, it should be submitted to the Department of Agriculture.
• The application reference number will be provided to the farmers to track the status of the application.

The farmers can track the application status on the PMFBY website through the ‘Application Status’ option on the home page. Once the application is accepted, the farmers need to pay the premium to obtain the insurance cover under this scheme.