Farming is not an easy career path. It’s a calling that demands dedication, commitment, and passion. But while a farm may have been part of your family’s life for generations, it’s still, at its heart, a business, with assets and risks that need to be managed carefully. To protect those hard-earned assets, farmland insurance is a crucial part of your business plan. And at Park Insurance, we’re here to support our farming community with agricultural insurance policies that are as hard-working as you are.
Why is farmland insurance important?
Whether you’ve only just entered the industry or your agricultural land has been in your family for decades, you need to ensure that the time, effort and expense you’ve put into turning your farm into a success is covered against compensation claims, damage, weather catastrophes, and even theft and vandalism.
Today, the variety of different farm insurance means that no matter what kind of farm, smallholding or estate you manage, there is the right kind of cover on offer for you. Let’s look at what’s available before we go more in-depth into finding the right agricultural insurance for you.
What’s on offer?
- Farm property – Your buildings are an integral part of your farm. Barns can be brand-new structures or listed buildings going back hundreds of years. Regardless of their heritage, you need the same kind of farm insurance you expect on any property. Farm building insurance considers the unique usage of farm buildings, accounting for the storage of large machinery, combustible materials such as hay and straw, and their use to house livestock. Refined and precisely tailored to your needs, farm property insurance gives you the peace of mind that your most important structures are covered.
- Farm machinery – Tractors, bailing machines, milking equipment, quads – they’re all vital elements of your everyday life on a farm. They’re also costly to replace should anything happen to them. Farm vehicles such as quads are particularly vulnerable to thieves, who often ‘steal to order’ and will target remote farms and rural locations. Including your farm machinery in your insurance will ensure that if thieves do manage to break in and take your equipment, or if a barn fire destroys them, you have the financial cover to replace them and return to work quickly.
- Environmental insurance – Farmers have always been custodians of the countryside and take seriously their responsibility to protect the integrity of the land. However, an unforeseen event can cause catastrophic damage to waterways or another person’s property. Environmental insurance protects you financially if an event on your farm leads to pollution or environmental contamination beyond your boundaries.
- Stock cover – It can take generations to build up a pedigree herd of cattle or a flock of sheep. Disease can wipe those decades of hard work out almost instantly. The financial cost of losing a pure bloodline herd to a disease such as Foot and Mouth or TB can be astronomical. Stock cover protects you financially if your livestock is lost to illness or stolen by rustlers.
- Grazing land insurance – This can provide protection if your grazing land is damaged through events such as flooding or wildfires, and you cannot graze your stock on them, incurring additional feed costs.
- Crop insurance – A couple of weeks’ heavy rain can decimate a crop of soft fruit. Weeks of blistering heat can scorch the earth, causing fires that wipe out an entire year’s work in one day. A crop failure isn’t just frustrating; it can cause real financial hardship. Crop insurance can give you a financial cushion that helps you to rebuild after a crop failure due to flooding or fire.
- Employer’s Liability insurance – If you employ anyone on your farm, even if they are sub-contractors, only work part-time or are family members, you must have employer liability insurance. This is one of the very few legal insurance requirements, and you can incur a heavy fine if you don’t have cover.
- Public Liability insurance – At some point, the public may have access to your land, whether that’s via a footpath, a bridleway or byway, or even delivering to your farm. If they are injured, or their property is damaged while on your land, they could potentially bring a compensation claim against you. Public liability insurance for farms provides cover for legal fees and any compensation awards that the courts may make.
Do I really need all of this?
Not necessarily. It will depend on the type of farm or smallholding you run. So, for example, a purely arable farm will not need insurance for livestock or grazing land. The best way to ensure you have the cover you need is to sit down with a broker and assemble a tailor-made package or insurance portfolio specifically designed to your requirements.
And that’s where we come in.
Park Insurance – working with the farming community
For over 30 years, Park Insurance has been offering bespoke insurance packages supplied by some of the most respected insurance providers in the UK. As preferred brokers to many of the country’s top insurance companies, we can find you the best cover at the most affordable prices. By working closely with these farm insurance companies, we do all the hard work and searching so you don’t have to. And our close relationship with many of the top agriculture insurance companies means we can source deals you won’t find on comparison sites.
We don’t just know about insurance. We make it our business to know about your business too. Our advisors all have ‘real world’ experience, so they understand businesses’ daily challenges, especially rural operations such as farms, estates and smallholdings. They can work with you to create an insurance package that suits your budget and gives you the peace of mind you want.
To learn more about our farm insurance and how it can help you, talk to one of our team today by calling 0117 955 6835 or fill in the online form, and we’ll get back to you.