Agriculture is statistically the most dangerous industry in Great Britain, and yet the people who run farms remain among the most underinsured assets on them.
According to figures published by the Health and Safety Executive in July 2025, the fatal injury rate in agriculture is 22 times higher than the all-industries average. The sector accounts for approximately one per cent of the UK workforce but around 20 per cent of all workplace fatalities. And 65% of those deaths over the five years to 2024 were to self-employed workers, the very people most likely to be running a family farm with no formal safety net beneath them. (Health and Safety Executive, Fatal Injuries in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing in Great Britain, July 2025.)
Alan Tate-Smith (pictured), director of AMB Rural and Commercial, believes the industry is still not having the conversation that matters most.
"They can have 25 brand new tractors in a row," he said, "but if they've broken both their legs, they aren't driving any of them."
For Tate-Smith, the failure to address personal accident, life insurance, critical illness and income protection cover for farming clients is the most consequential blind spot in agricultural broking.
"I think there is a reticence in farming to discuss their own mortality and I think that's a mistake," he said. "Because I've seen it throughout my career where if plans aren't put in place, the farm can go."
Farming families are often reluctant to discuss what happens if the person running the business becomes seriously ill, injured or dies. Tate-Smith said that can leave farms exposed when succession plans and protection arrangements have not been put in place.
Tate-Smith is direct about what good broking in this space looks like. "Ultimately, everything can be replaced but the people," he said. "That to me is the biggest area that still needs to be brought to the fore all the time."
Tate-Smith makes a counterintuitive observation about where agricultural risk is actually moving. Physical hazards on farms, historically the dominant claims driver, are gradually declining. Improved electrical inspection standards, better construction techniques and changing theft patterns are all contributing to a lower physical risk profile than a generation ago.
"The growth in risk is litigation and regulatory inspection and prosecution," he said. "People suing you, the Environment Agency prosecuting, health and safety prosecuting you, that's hugely on the rise and that is a disproportionately high cost."
Management liability protection, he said, has moved from being a discretionary add-on to an essential component of farm insurance programmes. "It's not nice to have. It's a - you need this coverage," he said.
The shift has implications for how farm insurance programmes are structured. While buildings, machinery and livestock remain central considerations, Tate-Smith argued that management liability and personal protection covers are becoming increasingly important as regulatory scrutiny and litigation costs rise.
Tate-Smith said renewable energy installations are creating fresh challenges as farms adopt technologies that many insurance products were not originally designed to accommodate.
Solar panels, battery storage systems and anaerobic digestion units are becoming increasingly common, but insurer appetite has not always kept pace. Underwriters, Tate-Smith said, are treating some of these technologies with a degree of caution that he believes is disproportionate to the actual claims experience.
"I've never had a biomass boiler fire in 20-odd years of insurance," he said. "But you would think the way underwriters carry on the whole thing is going to explode within 20 seconds of going on cover."
Solar panels are an emerging flashpoint. One or two insurers are beginning to move towards requiring annual inspections, a requirement that Tate-Smith describes as practically unworkable on working farms. "It's not going to be economically viable to send somebody up every year to work at height to look at every single fitting and fixing and connection," he said.
Battery storage is, in his assessment, the most significant near-term problem. The technology is relatively new, claims data is limited, and nervousness among underwriters is translating into declining or restrictive terms. Methane capture, where farms capture and process methane from slurry, presents what Tate-Smith believes will be a major challenge within the next decade.
"My prediction: in the next ten years, 50 per cent of dairy farms will be capturing methane from their own slurry and either running tractors on it or processing it and selling it," he said. "That's going to cause a problem."
Tate-Smith also questioned whether insurers are doing enough to reward farms that invest in risk management measures such as CCTV, electrical inspections and health and safety procedures.
Tate-Smith argued that farms investing in risk management measures are not always rewarded through pricing or underwriting terms.
"The insurers all need to have a game of golf together and all present the same idea," he said. "If you have this suite of risk improvements, we will reward you with X off your premium. It may take three or four years of investment from the insurance companies, but ultimately it would improve risk, and that's where the big claims can come."
Whether the challenge is personal protection, management liability or emerging energy technologies, Tate-Smith's argument is that agricultural insurance is changing. The question for brokers and insurers is whether coverage, underwriting appetite and risk conversations are evolving at the same pace.
