How to legally obtain compensation for agricultural losses caused by floods
At about 6:15 p.m. on July 12, Liao Luguang had just gotten off work when his phone rang. It was the 8th call he had received that day reporting crop damage caused by floods. After hanging up, Liao Luguang and insurance company staff drove for half an hour to the disaster reporting site - Zuogiashan Village, Shuangjiangkou Town, Ningxiang County, Hunan Province - to survey the disaster situation on site.
Liao Luguang is the section chief of the insurance section of the Ningxiang County Agriculture Bureau. Since the catastrophic flood occurred in early July, he and local insurance company staff have been rushing between townships and village groups every day, busy around the clock. Ningxiang, as a major grain-producing county of Changsha City, the capital of Hunan Province, is the most severely damaged district and county in the whole city in this flood disaster, with 200,000 mu of rice affected.
The severe flood disaster caused huge losses to agricultural production. In Hunan, the "land of fish and rice," not only was the "rice bag" badly flooded and damaged, and the "vegetable basket" seriously damaged, but cash crops, animal husbandry, and aquaculture also suffered considerable losses, with many crops suffering "catastrophic damage."
Was natural disaster accompanied by "man-made disaster"? In Jinghuapu Village, Jinghuapu Township, at the border between Ningxiang County and Heshan District, before the rainstorm arrived, a mineral waste oil collection enterprise built right next to farmland and fish ponds failed to evacuate its oil drums in time. The rainstorm washed away the oil drums, causing more than 1,100 mu of rice fields and fish ponds to be polluted to varying degrees.
In the face of direct agricultural losses caused by floods, aside from government disaster relief and assistance, what role can commercial insurance play? Regarding the dual losses caused by floods and pollution, how should legal liability be defined? How should losses be compensated? With these questions, the reporter went specially to the front line of disaster relief and claims settlement in Hunan to investigate.
Claims for bulk crops: hope to raise compensation standards for damaged grain and other crops
Hunan's rice output once ranked first in the country for many consecutive years, and this flood disaster caused extremely severe rice losses. According to statistics from the Hunan Provincial Department of Finance on July 15, the province's reported rice losses amounted to 175 million yuan, accounting for 73.5% of the province's reported agricultural insurance losses due to disasters.
On July 3, the Ningxiang County Agriculture Bureau organized and established a rapid handling team for flood disaster claims cases to deploy disaster survey forces. According to the disaster situation, starting from July 4, led by relevant persons in charge of the Ningxiang County Agriculture Bureau and agricultural insurance heads of insurance companies, 13 survey teams were formed to conduct risk surveys in 29 townships and guide farmers in disaster production self-rescue.
Shuangjiangkou Town has low-lying terrain and was relatively severely affected. According to Ou Youming, deputy director of the town's agriculture office, as of July 12, there were still more than 1,100 mu of rice submerged in water with not even the tips showing; more than 6,000 mu had been submerged for more than 3 days and the rice became moldy after the water receded; some late-harvest early rice was in the grain-filling stage, and more than 2,000 mu had rice milk that had already become foul; there were also 20,000 mu of late-maturing varieties in the flowering stage, and the rice flowers were washed away by the rainstorm and could not be fertilized.
"We are a major agricultural town and also a main producing area of double-season rice, surrounded by water on three sides, with 3.5 kilometers of rice fields along the riverbank. With disasters in nine out of ten years, the villagers have always had a strong awareness of insurance. In addition, grain farmers only need to pay 20% of the premium, while the other 80% is borne by the finance department, so all 3,186 mu of early rice in the whole village were insured." said Sun Zhengbiao, accountant of Zuogiashan Village, Shuangjiangkou Town. In this rainstorm, 15 of the village's 19 groups suffered disasters, including nearly 700 mu of rice with total crop failure.
Sun Zhengbiao counted on his fingers and said: "At present, the maximum compensation for rice is 360 yuan/mu, and this is only the materialized cost. For the 700 mu with total crop failure, based on the minimum yield of 750 jin/mu and compared with this year's early rice minimum purchase price of 135 yuan per 100 jin, the loss per mu is at least more than 1,100 yuan."
"I hope that for bulk crops like rice, compensation standards can be raised so that our farmers' planting income can have more protection in disaster years," Sun Zhengbiao said.
Insurance for specialty crops: urgently hope to expand pilot insurance areas for vegetables and other crops
Compared with bulk crops such as rice, the disaster situation of specialty crops such as vegetables cannot be ignored either. In Hanshou County, a major vegetable-producing county in Hunan, nearly 84,000 mu of vegetables were affected this year, of which 23,000 mu were damaged and 20.45 million mu had total crop failure. The county's direct economic losses from vegetables caused by rainstorms reached 71.66 million yuan.
Fortunately, vegetables in Hanshou County were included in the scope of insurance for the first time this year as specialty agriculture. According to the 2014 Notice on Matters Related to Carrying Out Pilot Work on Specialty Agricultural Insurance issued by the Hunan Provincial Department of Finance, each county (city) may apply for specialty agricultural insurance based on its own conditions. After approval to carry out the pilot, the Hunan Provincial Department of Finance determines reward and subsidy standards according to insurance planning and pilot implementation.
"Compared with rice, vegetable insurance not only has higher premiums, with farmers bearing half the premium, that is, 50 yuan/mu; moreover, the vegetable claims procedure is relatively complex. Because multiple crops can be grown on one mu of vegetable land, and different varieties have different prices, the compensation standard is difficult to unify for the time being." said Xiong Guoliang, head of the agricultural insurance station of the Hanshou County Agriculture Bureau. This year, 80,000 mu of vegetables in the county were covered by specialty agricultural insurance, of which 13,000 mu were determined through surveys to be eligible for compensation this time.
"Even a little compensation means smaller losses. Fortunately, all 2,000 mu of vegetables I planted were insured." Nie Xilong, head of the Chengmeng Vegetable Professional Cooperative in Hanshou County, had more than 300 mu of pumpkins affected this time. According to the current compensation standard, 150,000 yuan in losses can be recovered.
But Jiangguo Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. in Ningxiang County, also engaged in vegetable planting, was not so lucky. Li Qinghe, the company's head, told the reporter that in this rainstorm, more than 300 mu of peppers and more than 600 mu of ginger in the company were affected, with direct economic losses reaching more than 7 million yuan, yet it could not get any compensation.
"It's not that I was unwilling to insure." Li Qinghe said frankly that vegetables are a high-investment, high-risk industry. Since he began large-scale vegetable planting in 2014, he had gone to the county agriculture bureau three times to ask about buying insurance for vegetables, but was told he could not buy it.
Liao Luguang also expressed helplessness about this: "Ningxiang is one of the important 'vegetable baskets' of Changsha's urban area. We conducted a preliminary survey and found that more than 90% of the county's large vegetable growers and others have a strong willingness to buy insurance. We have been reporting upward, but the Provincial Department of Finance has not yet approved the specialty vegetable insurance applied for by the Ningxiang County Finance Bureau, so this compensation settlement definitely cannot be launched."
"The shareholders of our company are all farmers. With losses as large as this year's, we simply cannot bear it relying only on our own strength." Li Qinghe hopes that the industry he is engaged in can have insurance support and no longer rely completely on "living at the mercy of the weather."
Accidents suspected of being human-induced: hope to compensate farmers' losses according to law
For the villagers of Jinghuapu Village, Jinghuapu Township, Ningxiang County, misfortunes never come singly. During the rainstorm on July 4, because the wall of a mineral waste oil collection enterprise in neighboring Heshan District, Yiyang City, was washed down, more than 100 oil drums piled inside the wall outside the factory building rushed out from the waste oil collection station and floated in the water. Many oil drums leaked, and nearly 1,000 mu of rice fields and more than 100 mu of water areas in 3 villages were polluted by oil.
The dual disaster of rainstorm and oil pollution brought incalculable losses to many large planting and breeding households. In villager Hu Haiqing's family, some of the topmouth culter in the entire fish pond were washed away, and some died from pollution, with economic losses reaching more than 400,000 yuan.
How should the losses brought by the dual disaster be compensated? The local government said that the flood was the main cause and improper enterprise management was the secondary cause, and that it would order the enterprise involved to provide corresponding compensation based on a third-party environmental assessment report.
The third-party environmental assessment report was not publicly announced as scheduled. The villagers have reported the oil pollution incident to the Hunan Provincial Environmental Protection Department. Because the incident crosses municipal and prefectural administrative regions, the provincial environmental protection department has now accepted the complaint. One of the legal bases for acceptance is Article 57, Paragraph 1 of the Environmental Protection Law. This provision stipulates: If citizens, legal persons, and other organizations discover that any unit or individual has polluted the environment or damaged the ecology, they have the right to report it to the competent environmental protection department or another department responsible for environmental protection supervision and management.
The reporter consulted a lawyer on this matter. Deng Sheng, a lawyer at Guangdong Junyan (Changsha) Law Firm, said: "According to the provisions of China's Tort Liability Law, if damage is caused by environmental pollution, the polluter shall bear tort liability. The methods borne by the polluter may include restoration to the original state and compensation for losses."
He Jianjun, president of the Hunan Environmental Protection Federation, believes that restoration to the original state within a short time is unlikely for this kind of pollution, because even if the surface pollution is treated, the pond silt and rice in the rice fields may also be polluted, and it is very difficult to completely treat it. Therefore, compensation for losses should take into account both direct losses and indirect losses.
This environmental expert also pointed out that in addition to ordering compensation, accountability should also be pursued: Was it legal to build a polluting enterprise beside rice fields and ponds? If it was not legal, then who approved the polluting enterprise to be built right next to rice fields and ponds? Knowing or should have known that a rainstorm was coming, why did the enterprise involved not properly seal or move the oil drums? If management is not tightened, such problems will continue to occur.
Farmers such as Hu Haiqing said they hope the governments of both places and the enterprise involved will not only be active in attitude but also reflect it in action, compensate according to law, let farmers reduce some losses, and restore agricultural production as soon as possible.