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Last Updated: 16 Oct 2025

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)

The PMFBY is a Central Sector scheme offering voluntary, comprehensive crop insurance to farmers to safeguard against losses, stabilize income, and promote modern agricultural practices.

Quick Facts 

  • Purpose: Comprehensive crop insurance from pre-sowing to post-harvest period 
  • Type: Central Sector Scheme
  • Nature: Demand driven scheme and is voluntary for the States as well as farmers 
  • Beneficiaries: All farmers including sharecroppers and tenant farmer growing the notified crops in the notified areas

Objectives

  • Financial support to farmers suffering crop loss/ damage, stabilizing their income and ensuring flow of credit to the agriculture sector.
  • Adoption of innovative & modern agricultural practices and crop diversification.

Salient Features

  • Background: PMFBY replaced the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified NAIS. 
    • However, the Restructured Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) is still continued.
      • RWBCIS uses weather parameters as "proxy‟ for crop yields in compensating the cultivators for deemed crop losses.
  • Crops covered for rabi and kharif: All cereals, millets, pulses, and Oilseeds.
  • Premium to be paid: Premium is paid as % of the sum assured or Actuarial Premium Rate (APR), whichever is less.
    • APR is the premium rate set by insurance companies.
Flowchart showing premium payment structure for crop insurance: farmers pay 5% for commercial horticultural crops, 2% for Kharif crops, and 1.5% for Rabi crops, while government subsidizes the remaining premium in 90:10 ratio for NER states and 50:50 for other states.
  • Insured sum of crops: 
    • Crops with MSP: States/UTs can either choose a scale of finance or district-level value of notional average yield at MSP. 
    • Crops without MSP: Farm gate price will be considered.
Infographic detailing PMFBY's comprehensive crop risk coverage including five protection categories: prevented sowing/planting risk, standing crop protection from drought/flood, post-harvest loss coverage, localized calamities protection, and add-on wildlife damage coverage, with general exclusions for war, nuclear risks, malicious damage, and preventable risks listed at bottom.
  • Coverage of risk and exclusion
    • Basic Coverage (mandatory): Yield losses (sowing to harvesting) due to non-preventable risks like drought, dry spells, flood, inundation, etc. 
    • Add-On Coverage (Discretion of states): Coverage for Prevented Sowing/Planting/ Germination Risk, etc. 
    • General Exclusions: Losses arising out of war and nuclear risks, malicious damage, and other preventable risks.
  • Other provisions
    • Area Approach basis i.e., all the farmers in 'Insurance Unit (IU)' face similar risks
    • Aadhar mandatory
    • States can set up their own insurance companies

Other Key Initiatives under PMFBY: 

  • DigiClaim: Claims processed via National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) and paid directly to farmers, with tracking updates via SMS. 
  • Weather Information Network Data Systems (WINDS) portal: Provides centralized hyper-local weather data for better risk assessment. 
  • Yield Estimation System, based on Technology (YES-TECH) Manual: For precise assessments at the Gram Panchayat level. 
  • FASAL Project (Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agro- meteorology and Land based observations Project). 
  • National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA): Offers agriculture information via ICT and is now integrated into the Digital Agriculture Mission. 
  • ISRO's Bhuvan: Offers data on plantation, pests, and weather. 
  • NADAMS (National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System) 
  • CROPIC (Collection of Real Time Observations and Photo of Crops) 
  • Door to Door enrollment app AIDE/Sahayak
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