Wildfire Insurance and California's Farms and Ranches

While loss of life, devastation, and smoke hazards from California wildfires are reported, another battle often plays out behind the scenes—one that revolves around insurance. Peter Ansel, Director of Policy with the California Farm Bureau…

“As fire started to be a more normal occurrence to the degree that it’s happening in the state, we started having a lot of members that were losing access to affordable insurance.”

Ansel told me they went from having one policy that might cover it all – house, buildings, equipment, etc – to having to source multiple lines of insurance for different assets…

“At the time, the California Fair Plan, which is our insurer of last resort, didn’t have a statutory requirement to accept farms and ranches. We had to start to get involved in the insurance side of what’s happening with wildfire crisis and run some legislation so that our members, when they don’t get access to insurance in the admitted market, that they had some place to go to still be able to get insurance because, obviously, if they can’t insure their business and properties, then it’s really hard, impossible to run a business.”

It’s not a system without its nuances. We’ll dive into some of those in the coming weeks. Again Peter Ansel, California Farm Bureau.