Farmscape for March 20, 2013

A first of its kind Professorship in Agriculture Risk Management and Insurance at the University of Manitoba will focus on the creation of insurance based solutions to address some of the challenges being faced by Canadian farmers.
The establishment of the Guy Carpenter Professorship in Agriculture Risk Management and Insurance in the University of Manitoba's Asper School of Business was announced earlier this week.
The  first of its kind program will facilitate research into agricultural risk management insurance from an actuarial perspective and will include supervision of graduate students in the newly created Master of Actuarial Mathematics program.
Dr. Lysa Porth, an assistant professor and Guy Carpenter Professor of Agriculture Risk Management and Insurance and an assistant professor in the Department of Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics at the University of Manitoba, says agricultural risks are changing and have become more complex.

Clip-Dr. Lysa Porth-University of Manitoba:
The research will cover a broad spectrum, really anything to do with agricultural risk management insurance so it can look at things from crop insurance, it can look at livestock insurance, it can look at things from the producer level up, it can look at government issues.
One of the things that I'm looking at right now is the Agristability Program and looking at how that Agristability Program is impacted under the new Growing Forward 2 framework, so looking not only how it impacts farmers but also looking at how it impacts potentially the private sector's role, in that, how it affects other programs and how it impacts the risk level to the governments.
It's really an opportunity to liaison and work with all of these various agriculture groups and listen to what the needs are and then look at insurance based solutions and risk management solutions to overcome those challenges.

Dr. Porth views the establishment of this new professorship as an opportunity for producers to develop some of these intricate risk management and insurance products.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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