While bundling drought-tolerant maize with index insurance generated significant drought resilience for small-scale farmers, seed and insurance companies need continued support to scale the product, particularly where farmers have little experience with either improved seeds or insurance.
In July, 2018 in Tanzania, the AMA Innovation Lab convened insurance leaders from research, government and the private sector to exchange knowledge on effective agricultural index insurance for economic development.
A Feed the Future AMA Innovation Lab pilot project in Tanzania that pairs drought-tolerant hybrid maize with insurance has found early success with adoption and in-kind payouts.
In a game to simulate fishery co-management in Tanzania, groups of five fishers holding spoons and buckets stood around bins of beans. The buckets represented their boats, and the bins were bodies of water. The beans were fish.
Small-scale farmers in developing economies worldwide may soon have better financial tools to manage the risk of drought with a new AMA Innovation Lab project using ultra-high resolution satellite data.
