Agriculture has always been a business of timing, precision, and unpredictability. Today, farms are evolving faster than the insurance products meant to protect them. Josh Lauth, President of Rokstone Agriculture, recently contributed to an Insurance Times feature on the impact of farm digitization.
In the feature, Josh highlighted that what catches insurers off guard is that farms are not ‘one risk’ but rather a combination of manufacturing, logistics, and property operations, all interconnected. A single equipment failure can ripple through the entire business, disrupting planting schedules, harvest windows, processing deadlines, and much more.
Why Does Agriculture Still Catch Insurers Out?
From an underwriting perspective, agriculture is deceptively layered. A farm is a variety of independent exposures, all of which operate on strict timelines. Plus, farms are rarely isolated exposures. Weather systems, livestock disease, supply chain disruption, or network failures can trigger correlated losses across entire areas.
On top of that, the value of farm assets is constantly changing. New technology, expanded facilities, leased equipment, and fluctuating material replacement costs all mean that what is insured today might be under-protected tomorrow.
Modern farms do far more than grow crops. Agritainment, on-site retail, processing, cold storage, and third-party contractors are now common, blurring the line between ‘farm’ and ‘commercial business’, and challenging traditional policy structures.
How Precision Agriculture Has Transformed Farm Risk
Precision agriculture has made farms far more efficient, but also much more reliant on uptime, connectivity, and reliable software. Missing a single planting window can now have serious financial implications, turning once minor delays into major losses.
This shift has also created entirely new types of exposures that insurers had not seen before the likes of GPS-enabled and automated machinery, including:
● Precision Errors
Incorrect GPS guidance can lead to misapplication of seed, fertilizers, and chemicals, sometimes across many acres, before it is detected.
● Autonomous Equipment Incidents
Near misses or collisions involving autonomous or semi-autonomous machinery, particularly around contractors, public roads, or mixed-use sites.
● System-wide Downtime
Software, licensing, or update failures that stop whole fleets during critical operational windows.
Cyber Risk on the Modern Farm
When most people think of cyber risk, they imagine a laptop or office setting. On a digitized farm, it can look very different. Josh warns, “A cyber incident can lock farm management platforms, disrupt processing schedules and inventories, prevent dispatch, mismanage irrigation, control ventilation systems, and disable feeding machinery remotely.”
Farms are increasingly part of a broader technology ecosystem. While awareness among farmers is growing, gaps remain. Many see downtime as an operational issue, not a cyber one. Josh explains, “The most forward‑thinking operations are already segmenting networks and tightening vendor controls so they are prepared if something goes wrong, but not everyone in the sector is at the same level yet.”
For insurers and brokers, spotting these risks early is key to helping farms stay protected as digital and physical threats become more connected.
The Future of Farming and Insurance
Farming businesses are changing fast. Over the next decade, Josh expects to see:
● Larger, multi-entity operations
● More contracted and platform-based models
● Closer links with processing and logistics
● More formal risk management in larger operations
As farms grow, their operations get more advanced. Things like safety teams, cyber hygiene, and stronger vendor controls will become standard. Josh says, “This increases both the sophistication of the risk and also the opportunity for insurers to design more tailored solutions.”
Josh expects agricultural insurance by 2035 to be clearer, more data-driven, and built around real farm operations. Policies will cover cyber‑physical events, mix traditional indemnity with parametric triggers for time‑critical losses, and offer preventative support such as machinery maintenance, cyber guidance and vendor checks.
Farm Consolidation and What It Means for Insurers
As farms consolidate, the stakes get higher for insurers. Bigger operations mean higher insured values per account, pushing placements into bigger limits and reinsurance conversations. “With fewer insured holding more of the market’s value, a single loss can have a much bigger impact,” Josh explains.
This kind of concentration leads to more complex program structures. At the same time, buyers want more certainty, including faster claims, more predictable terms, and protection for time‑sensitive risks like downtime or supply chain issues disruption.
For insurers, consolidation means capacity decisions can no longer be made on a purely account-by-account basis. They need a strategic, portfolio-focused approach to manage risk across a quickly changing sector.
Rokstone Leading the Conversation on Modern Agricultural Risk
At Rokstone, we are watching farms, tracking emerging risks, and thinking like farmers. We see the full picture of modern farming and understand that farms are no longer fields and barns but interconnected, data-driven ecosystems.
