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What Farm Insurance Covers
Farm insurance covers the homestead, the sheds and fences, the machinery, the livestock, the stored produce and the liability of a working farm, a hobby farm, an orchard, a vineyard or a market garden. It is a package written for rural property, because a home policy stops at the house and a business policy does not understand a paddock.
The losses are rural ones. Fire moves through dry grass and takes fences, sheds, hay and machinery in an afternoon. Storm and flood damage crops, structures and stock. A tractor rolls. A visitor is injured by livestock or on a farm track. Chemicals drift onto a neighbour's crop. Theft of fuel, tools and machinery from unattended sheds is constant, and a quad bike accident can bring a claim from a worker or a guest.
Farm businesses answer to biosecurity, chemical use and workplace safety laws, and agricultural contracts and leases usually require public liability insurance at a set limit. Where the farm sells to the public, runs a cellar door or hosts visitors, the liability exposure changes again. Business interruption insurance for a farm is written on the loss of produce or income after an insured event rather than on a shop's trading figures.
Fortis Risk Solutions arranges farm insurance for rural properties across Victoria and the rest of Australia from offices in Box Hill and Hawthorn, as part of our business insurance range. We look at the land use, the structures, the machinery list, the livestock numbers, the chemicals and whether the public comes onto the property before approaching the rural insurers who write this class.
Who this covers
Businesses in this group include:
- Working farms: grazing, cropping and mixed
- Hobby farms and lifestyle properties
- Orchards, vineyards and cellar doors
- Market gardens and horticulture
- Horse properties and agistment
- Rural landlords and absentee owners
If your business is not listed, ask us. The sections below are the starting point for any business in the group.
Farm Insurance: Cover Sections and Benefits
Farm Insurance FAQs
The sheds, the fences, the machinery, the livestock, the produce and the liability that comes from running a farm, plus the vehicles that work the land. A standard home and contents insurance policy covers the house and its contents and excludes business activity, so a farm run under a home policy is largely uninsured, and an ordinary business insurance package does not fit either. A farm package writes the house and the farm in one schedule.
Usually not. Standard livestock cover responds to death from accident, fire, lightning, storm, flood, theft and attack by dogs, with disease excluded except where a specific extension is offered for named conditions. Stud and high value animals can be insured individually with mortality cover. Biosecurity controls are a condition of most rural policies.
Fire, including bushfire, is a standard insured event for the buildings, the contents, the fences, the machinery and the livestock, subject to the sums insured and any fire protection conditions. Crops and pasture are covered only where a crop section is selected. After a major fire season insurers look closely at vegetation management and water supply when they renew a rural property.
Only where the policy knows about them. Farm public liability covers injury to visitors and damage to neighbours' property, but paying guests, farm stays, school visits, pick your own operations and cellar doors need to be declared and rated. Where food or wine is served, the liability section needs products cover and, for alcohol, liquor liability.
Employees are covered by workers compensation, which is compulsory once the farm employs anyone, including seasonal pickers. Contractors need their own public liability, and the farm's policy answers claims by a contractor against the farm for negligence. The owner-operator and family members are not employees, so personal accident cover replaces income if one of them cannot work after an injury.
Rural wordings turn on the land use, the fire conditions, the machinery schedule and which activities are declared. FRS helps you disclose the farm as it actually runs, set sums insured on replacement values for structures and machinery, compare the rural insurers who specialise in this class and act as your advocate at claim time, when an assessor is working a long way from the office. Trucks and utes that go on the road are placed under commercial motor insurance alongside the farm package.
Talk to a broker about Farm Insurance
Call 03 7046 3766 on weekdays between 9:30am and 6pm, email admin@fortisrisksolutions.com.au, or send an enquiry and a broker from our Box Hill or Hawthorn office will come back to you about farm insurance. Tell us what the business does and what the lease or contract asks for, and we take it from there.