Why Commercial Insurance Doesn't Cover Farmers and Insurance Products That Do Cover Farms

Commercial insurance, in the truest sense, covers only businesses that operate in the usual way. You have to have customers or clients, have products or services that fill the needs of customers or clients, and have office spaces or stores from which to sell these goods. Yet, does that not also apply to farmers and their farms? They have goods and create products that consumers want, and farmers work from a home office, right? While that is true, commercial insurance does not exactly fit with a farmer's needs. As such, farmers need quite a different set of insurance products, like some or all of the following.

Crop Insurance

Crop insurance protects crops against unforeseeable and uncontrollable losses. Fires, hail storms, locusts, and early frosts all can destroy a farmer's crops. Not only are the crops lost, but so are the profits the farmer would have received had the crops not been destroyed. 

Livestock Insurance

Farmers that raise animals for milk or meat also have to protect their livestock. While these animals turn into the products that consumers literally consume, they are not like the products and services protected under commercial insurance. Ergo, the farmer needs yet another type of insurance to protect the animals he or she raises for food and/or milk.

Continuation of Income Insurance

While commercial insurance covers business and store owners against lawsuits and loss of income due to employees or customers that sue, farmers have nobody to sue if something goes wrong or they are badly injured while working their farms. If a farmer breaks his/her arm in a tractor rollover accident, or if a farm hand is trampled by a cow, the farmer needs to cover all of the days which he/she is unable to work and/or does not have any help to complete daily chores. Continuation of income insurance does for farmers what commercial insurance does for everyone else.

Farm Equipment Insurance

Farm equipment, from tractors to plows and beyond, are not your ordinary, everyday machines. You cannot buy fleet insurance or business insurance or even auto insurance to cover this equipment. Since these pieces of farm equipment frequently cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, they need significantly more protection than a dozen cargo vans. For that reason, a farmer has to carry farm equipment insurance on every one of these special vehicular machines, as well as on the attachments and accessories.

For more information about what insurance you'll need for your farm, talk to an agent like those at the Bennett Agency.