Determinants of Farmers Awareness About Crop Insurance : Case of Ouesse District, Benin.

The commune of Ouesse is an area strongly threatened by climatic variations. To deal with this, agricultural insurance becomes a necessary tool for farmers. Unfortunately maize farmers are not interested in that product. This may be due to the fact that they do not know agricultural insurance. This study seeks to increase the number of producers interested in insurance by analyzing the factors that influence the awareness of maize insurance. It was carried out among 62 maize farmers that were randomly selected. The data collected from producers are relative to: socio-demographic characteristics, awareness, sources and types of information about maize insurance. The information was analyzed from SPSS software.25. The results show that the majority of farmers (54, 84%) are not aware of maize insurance. Among those farmers, few (32,14%) know about the insurance indemnity procedures. In addition, a binary logistic regression analysis reveals that: regularity in use of radio, access to credit and level of education have a positive and significant effect on awareness about maize insurance. It would be necessary to increase awareness among farmers through other means of communication (telephones, billboard, posters.etc.) about insurance (especially on the compensation procedure) and microfinance institutions. Insurance must work together with all microfinance institutions of the study area, so that a large majority of farmers will be aware of agricultural insurance.