Pula’s mission is to reimagine agricultural insurance to protect smallholder farmers worldwide. As an agricultural insurance and technology company Pula creates and provides innovative agricultural insurance and digital products. They aim to support smallholder farmers to improve their farming practices, sustain yield risks and increase their incomes over time.
Read more about this insurance start-up and its way of reimaging in our interview. The interview was conducted with Rose Goslinga, President and Co-founder of Pula Advisors AG.
As an insurance start-up, what are you expecting from membership in SWISSCO?
Pula would like the opportunity to connect and engage with strong supply chain partners, many of whom are SKP members. In exchange, Pula would offer co-funding towards any resulting partnerships, convene the relevant stakeholders (government, insurance sector), and share its expertise and knowledge on how yield index insurance can be used for risk transfer and mitigation in cocoa farming.
On your homepage, you state that you work with progressive governments to de-risk their agricultural investments and build their citizens’ resilience. How do you identify “progressive” governments, what exactly does “de-risking agricultural investments” mean, and how does that contribute to building citizens’ resilience?
Agricultural insurance is a relevant tool for managing the risks of climate change and contributing to climate adaptation. It can help stabilise farmers’ income, reduce poverty, and provide a safety net that increases climate resilience. Insurance can also facilitate farmers’ access to credit, which is relevant for investing in improved farming practices. Pula’s approach is to work with donors and third-sector partners to access funding that creates a catalytic environment for subsidisation of agricultural insurance premiums by state entities as part of overall support for the agricultural economy. While insurance premium subsidisation is a common agricultural risk management practice in developed markets, in developing markets - particularly in Africa - state subsidies for agricultural insurance are rare and thought to be cost-ineffective. Even though agricultural input subsidy, credit and extension programmes are relatively more widespread, risk management through agricultural insurance is an unexploited resource. Using area yield index insurance and focusing on premium financing mechanisms, such as pay-at-harvest, Pula aims to deploy development partner funding in a catalytic approach that dramatically opens up access to insurance and graduates local market players (e.g. offtakers, farmer associations, governments) towards fully funding insurance premium subsidisation under their existing agricultural interventions for smallholders.
What has your impact on the cocoa sector been so far?
We have developed a yield measurement protocol using the FAO’s CCE (crop cut experiment) methodology for cocoa tree yield sampling. We currently have a cocoa area yield index insurance (AYII) pilot going on with 1,000 farmers in Ghana growing cocoa for the Government Cocoa Agency, Cocobod, where the insurance is being implemented by the cooperatives under Cocobod. This will be the first cocoa insurance offered globally. In addition, the insurance premiums for the cocoa farmers are pre-financed at the start of the season and payment for these is recovered upon delivery of the harvest by the farmer, in a mechanism known as pay-at-harvest. We are keen to grow our expertise in the cocoa sector and reach more cocoa farmers with area yield index insurance to help them manage production and climate risks more effectively.
Where do you see Pula Advisor’s biggest potential to contribute to achieving SWISSCO’s goals regarding enhancing sustainability in the cocoa value chain?
As noted above, we believe index insurance can play a significant role in sustainable and economically viable risk management and mitigation for smallholder farmers in the cocoa value chain. As such, our potential lies in our ability to assist SWISSCO members in introducing impactful and sustainable risk management, as well as better access to financial services, to the smallholder cocoa farmers with whom they engage.
The photos below have been provided by Pula and show different scenarios of their activities within communities in Kenia. As their work does not only focus on cocoa, these photos also give insights into their work with other agricultural sectors.