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Satellite support to insure farmers against extreme droughts

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Agricultural insurance is a valuable strategy to cope with extreme weather risks. Improved satellite observation capabilities can be particularly helpful with droughts, but will not translate into better insurance unless key challenges are overcome.

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Fig. 1: Key requirements for the design of index insurance from satellite-retrieved imagery.

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken within the SURE-Farm (Towards SUstainable and REsilient EU FARMing systems) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 727520 (http://surefarmproject.eu). The content of this article does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Responsibility for the information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agricultural Economics and Policy Group, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Willemijn Vroege & Robert Finger

  2. Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Anton Vrieling

Authors
  1. Willemijn Vroege
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  2. Anton Vrieling
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  3. Robert Finger
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Correspondence to Willemijn Vroege or Robert Finger.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Wade Crow and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Vroege, W., Vrieling, A. & Finger, R. Satellite support to insure farmers against extreme droughts. Nat Food 2, 215–217 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00244-6

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