Putting A Resiliency Plan In Place On Your Farm

Preventing disruptions before they happen on the farm or ranch is part of the “predict-and-prevent” approach at Nationwide Insurance. Devin Fuhrman, chief agriculture and sponsor relations officer at Nationwide, said it's important for farmers and ranchers to focus on prevention.

“For farms and ranches across America, we're really focused on how they can be more resilient as they are navigating the very complex nature of their business and finding better ways to recover after a loss," said Fuhrman. "What we're really focused on is helping them with a predict-and-prevent mindset. We really want to help farmers and ranchers across the country to work on identifying risks earlier in their operation, try to remove that disruption, if possible, and protect the people and property that really make their businesses work. As we all know in agriculture, when it's go time, it's go time, and every hour matters. So, how do we help them actually have a resiliency plan to make sure that they are preventing loss, but also predicting what could happen, and then getting some help on how they can solve those issues.”

Be Sure To Think Of Different Technologies

The predict-and-prevent approach, he said, starts with identifying potential problems.

“Getting some help from your insurance agent or another trusted source as to what types of systems do they need to be looking at? Like their electrical systems, any equipment that is high-value, or machinery that could lead to some sort of disruption in their operation if those things were to go down or have a fire or any type of breakdown," Fuhrman said. "We actually encourage them to think about the different technologies that they could be using. And a couple of really good examples we've had are the thermal imaging cameras that have really come on the scene from our own risk management team, but also out in the country, where they can identify some of those hot spots in their electrical systems by using those thermal imaging cameras. And there are also systems that can be installed into their buildings - one of our partners called PrevTech - that can alert those farmers of any abnormal changes or surges in their system. So, it really does come back to identifying the problems as early as possible.”

Having the right tools to mitigate those problems will keep an operation moving forward. So, what risks should a farmer consider when putting a plan together.

"You have to think about what kind of planning do you need to do to maintain that business's continuity over time," Fuhrman added. "They may also have employees, so thinking about the safety of their employees, or how they keep them as productive as possible. They may have vehicles. They want to make sure that they understand the risks that those actually do pose on the farm, if there was a problem. And then we could get into a lot of things around grain handling and all the systems that go into moving grain from one place to the other, and all the different types of things that could go wrong there. And there's always going to be weather in our culture. It's something we've always had to deal with. It goes beyond just the barn, the shop, and the equipment. You need to think of it as a business, and then how you would respond in the time of loss.”

Be Sure To Look At Your Whole Farm Operation

Fuhrman added an agent can play a big role in helping farms and ranches become more resilient, even helping to put a resiliency plan into place.

“Well, at Nationwide, we have tremendous agents that we partner with who understand agriculture, understand farming, understand rural communities, and we'd ask the farmer to connect with their agent and have them look across the entire operation, because they can also help identify those exposures that maybe a farmer or rancher might not see," said Fuhrman. "So, the most recent study that we did at Nationwide, called the Farm Risk Ready Research, showed us that a little over a third of farmers have an actual resiliency in place. Well, that means that a number of farmers need to just have that first conversation and find a way to start having the conversation about building resiliency into their farms, into their ranches, and into their businesses. It could be something as simple as just creating a list of the things that they think they need to get done to really prepare for that worst-case scenario.”

Fuhrman said for more information on proactive steps to make your farm and ranch more resilient, check out Nationwide's Website.

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