USE CASE: QUANTIFYING CROP DAMAGE
Destructive weather is typical in most of the growing regions around the country. Growers having to deal with crop damage and navigating the insurance claims process is also common. Crop loss happens, whether it be from destructive weather or herbicide drift, pests, disease, drought, etc., and when it does, the insurance claims process follows for insured growers. Filing an insurance claim can be a complicated and challenging process for both growers and insurers. One of the biggest issues in filing crop damage insurance claims is the challenge of accurately quantifying the damage to ensure a fair return to the grower and payout by the insurer. Inaccurate reports can lead to unreasonable returns and cost growers thousands of dollars. High-resolution imagery provides a solution for both growers and insurance providers.
QUANTIFYING CROP DAMAGE WITH AERIAL IMAGERY
The most challenging obstacle in the insurance claim process, for both grower and insurer, is accurately quantifying crop damage. How do you make an accurate crop loss report without walking most of your field? Timely crop health imagery provides the answer. Damaged crops will have a specific, lower vigor NDVI signature than healthy plants. The TerrAvion zone creation tool (pictured to the right), available in the TerrAvion OverView web app, creates zoning maps from NDVI imagery. With this tool, TerrAvion users can create a zone using the NDVI signature of the damaged crops, and then select all other crops that share those same characteristics. The tool will tell the user exactly how many acres match the NDVI values of the damaged crops.
FOR GROWERS
For growers, the utility of imagery for insurance claims purposes is evident. No more coming out on the losing end of an inaccurate crop loss report. Create crop damage maps in a matter of minutes and arm yourself with accurate data to support your claim. Have your insurer spot check your imagery to prove its accuracy and eliminate the room for argument. The detail that TerrAvion high-resolution imagery provides will help facilitate valid claims and prevent unwanted issues from arising throughout the insurance process.
For growers, dealing with crop damage doesn’t end with the insurance claims process. Profit altering decisions need to be made on how to address the crop damage, whether it be to replant the damaged areas, apply nutrients, or to do nothing. Accurate crop damage reports are essential for calculating the profitability of the existing stand and the costs of replanting. Whatever actions the conditions warrant, TerrAvion provides the maps growers need to get inputs to their target groups of crops.
FOR INSURERS
Insurers are often seen as the bad guys in an insurance claims process, out to take advantage of inaccurate reports to pay growers less than what they deserve. But insurance agents don’t necessarily want to spend all of their time trying to disprove grower submitted insurance reports; they just want to make a fair assessment. High-resolution imagery can help them do that. Instead of spending hours trying to assess crop damage by walking a field, insurers can spend a fraction of the time ground-truthing and spot-checking crop health imagery and then projecting their findings across an entire field. Time is money, and faster and more accurate crop damage assessments save insurers plenty of time.
The insurance claims process can be an unpleasant part of life for insurers and growers, but high-resolution imagery can make it a faster, more accurate, and less painful process. For growers, important decisions that will define the outcome of a season will need to be made, and high-resolution imagery can guide recovery plans to limit yield loss from crop damage.
For more information, contact MidPlains Ag Services and one of our representatives will assist you with information and/or products available through TerrAvion.
(Courtesy TerrAvion)
