When you think of agriculture insurance covering equipment breakdown or failure, you think immediately of tractors, combines, and plowing equipment. But do you think about computers?

Today, it’s not your father’s farming. While many farm business owners may not even realize it, they’ve gone high-tech. Most farms nowadays operate on computerized equipment, replacing traditional farm equipment and processes or enhancing business practices and farm management. If you have updated your farm equipment recently, are you sure your agriculture insurance package covers the new equipment?

Equipment such as soil and weather sensors, crop sensors that monitor growth, or any computerized equipment is not covered under your standard agriculture business insurance policy. In fact, a motorized failure of any new equipment could be a devastating loss to your agriculture business. Worse, many older insurance policies were not written to anticipate the next-generation agriculture tools that today’s agribusiness and farm owners are using. Many policy limits are inadequate to cover motor failure or other stoppage in business due to mechanical failure.

Luckily, new policies now exist that cover these high-tech devices. New equipment breakdown policies protect agriculture businesses from mechanical failures and breakdowns, electrical distribution system failures, boiler and pressure equipment malfunctions, electronic systems stoppage, and even malfunctioning heating and cooling systems. Covering physical damage, as well as financial losses due to breakdowns, agriculture business equipment breakdown coverage offers protection for the damaged equipment, the income loss stemming from business interruption caused by the equipment breakdown, any electrical service interruptions caused by the breakdown, and any rental equipment costs. Also, these policies will cover business restoration costs.

If it’s been longer than three years since your last policy review, get in touch with an agribusiness insurance specialist. A review of your old coverage can outline how much coverage you have for equipment breakdown and whether that coverage is adequate for today’s more advanced farming equipment.

Flickr photo credit: johnnyalive

Filed under: Agribusiness by afis blogger