Risk Management Tools for Ag Retailers: A Gap In the Industry – The Scoop

There’s risk in every link in the agricultural supply chain. But the team at Vane says there’s one link that needs risk management tools and they aim to serve –agribusiness.

“Agribusinesses have a lot of risk,” says Clayton Becker, chief operating officer at Vane, who recently appeared on The Scoop Podcast. “That’s really what Vane was founded to do. We recognize a gap in the market that exists for agribusinesses that provide products and services to farmers.”

Founded in 2020, Vane provides policy coverage for weather-based losses to the business.

“We provide coverage for agribusinesses that aren’t covered, like farmers are, through federal crop insurance. Every year, farmers face millions of dollars of affected losses from weather events, and the frequency and severity of those losses is getting more intense. Those losses can be catastrophic for those people that are affected. Fortunately, farmers have great insurance options to cover them, protect their revenue, provide some coverage for replant or prevented plant or loss of the crop if they lose it from hail or perils like that. But the agribusinesses that supply farmers have really never had good coverage options,” Becker says.

Becker cites his previous roles in the agriculture industry as providing examples of how such assurance with coverage would benefit the supply chain. In 2019, when he was a senior leader at Golden Harvest, there were 1 million acre of prevent plant in North Dakota, and that along with other experiences demonstrate the great losses that can be experienced due to weather.

With coverage options for seed companies, seed treatment companies, ag retailers, custom applicators and more, Vane uses proprietary models in how it places policies.

“We start by getting a feel of the products or the services they provide, what the location is, and then looking at the weather, the crop history data, and then we pull data from RMA over the past decade or two to look at the losses that have been reported through RMA, and then overlay that with weather history,” Becker says. “So we can really provide them coverage to offset that lost revenue that they face.”

When working with clients, particularly, ag retail, they like to start with the question: what keeps them up at night?

“Where do they have significant impacts on their balance sheet due to lost services due to weather events. And we can take that and customize a policy,” Becker says.

He highlights how as retailers are planning for 2026, such coverage provided by a policy can be used to support programs the retailer offers.

“It can be a part of their business planning process. To know that they’ve got this coverage available they can budget it into their cost and their exposure, and then really think about how they market their services and their products to be as competitive as they can be in the marketplace,” he says.