Whether you run a fish farm, poultry farm, dairy farm, or even a horse farm taking care of crops and livestock is a huge responsibility, especially when the success of your business and your livelihood depends on them. Though agricultural advancements makes it possible to control factors that affect yield, odds still play a part nonetheless. 

Instead of waiting for something big to happen, many farm owners decide to invest in farm and ranch insurance so that they don’t watch helpless when tragedies such as typhoons, drought, and insect swarms strike.

With the goal of making the process of finding the right insurance policy easier for our readers, we went ahead and created this guide to farm insurance. We’ll start by discussing the various forms of farm insurance that are available to you then proceed talking about the average cost of insurance and the best companies to try. 

Ranch Liability Insurance

Liability insurance is one of the more common types of insurance you’ll hear talked about because it can apply to different situations. The situations that it applies to are also some of the riskiest for farms and ranches to deal with, meaning that it protects you when you need it most.

However, liability insurance also has a lot of nuance that you’ll need to consider when you’re looking for a policy. Some of the most common cases in which ranch liability insurance applies are when someone ends up getting injured or suffering property damage while they’re at your ranch.

For example, if someone is riding a horse at your farm or ranch and they end up getting bucked and hurt their leg in the process, they may end up holding you liable for their medical expenses. If they win in court, then you’ll have to pay out of pocket unless you have liability insurance.

The same can be said for property damage. Going back to the situation of someone being bucked from a horse, if that person ended up having their phone destroyed when they fell off of the horse, they may come after you for the price of the phone. Liability insurance will typically cover you for the cost of the device.

There are also several different forms of liability coverage that you’ll need to account for. One of the most common types of liability insurance is public liability.

Public liability insurance will only kick in if the person suing you is a member of the public, which means that they have to be a guest at your farm or working for another company. If you want your liability policy to cover your employees, you’ll need a more expensive general liability insurance policy.

Ranch Business Insurance

Beyond just liability insurance, many farmers and ranchers may wish to ensure that they’re more adequately covered, but packing on various forms of coverage can make your premium pretty expensive. Thankfully, insurance carriers offer a few ways to make sure that your insurance is as affordable as possible.

Business owner policies (BOPs) are just one of these methods, and they combine several forms of insurance coverage that are useful to business owners into one package. This package is discounted compared to the amount that you’d find yourself paying for each form of insurance individually.

This is a way of ensuring that you stick with the insurance company that you’re already purchasing your coverage from. If insurance carriers didn’t offer deals like these, there would be nothing stopping you from going to their competitors and getting better rates for different forms of coverage.

The exact kind of insurance contained in a BOP varies based on how much you’re paying for it and the carrier that you’re getting it from. In the majority of cases, BOPs contain a liability component, either general or public, and a commercial property insurance component that will pay for property damage. Many times Farm business utilize tractors, heavy equipment, skid steers, etc. - so it'd be a smart call for such businesses to get appropriate coverage as well.

Farm Insurance vs Ranch Insurance

Whether or not farm insurance and ranch insurance are classified differently depends on the insurance company that you’re dealing with. Many companies use these terms interchangeably while others may have two different insurance programs that are defined by these terms.

If your insurance carrier states that there’s a difference between these two forms of insurance, you can typically expect ranch insurance to be a little more expensive. This is because carriers typically consider ranch insurance to be livestock insurance whereas farm insurance can be a simpler agricultural insurance policy.

Farm and Ranch Insurance Cost

If you’re trying to figure out how much farm and ranch insurance is going to cost you in advance, you may have a bit of a challenge doing so without a quote. The reason why insurance companies tend to insist on the quote process is because insurance is an industry that is entirely based on risk and risks vary from one business to another based on so many factors.

That said, the average farm and ranch insurance cost is $68.33 per month or $820 per year for a standard $1m general liability insurance coverage.

If an insurance company doesn’t know anything about you, then it will be challenging for them to determine how much of a risk they’ll take by insuring you. So what are some of the factors that go into determining how much your farm and ranch insurance is going to cost?

One of the most significant factors that influences the cost of almost all kinds of insurance for ranches and farms is the size of said ranch or farm. If you’re trying to insure a larger farm, then you’ll need to pay more for coverage because that increases the chance of the insurance carrier having to pay out for costs on your behalf.

On the other hand, insurance companies aren’t taking too much of a risk when they insure a small farm because it’s less likely that you’ll file a claim and it’s less likely that they’ll have to pay out a large sum. Here’s a table of the average cost of insurance from some of the best farm and ranch insurance companies: