Many smallholder families are exceptionally prone to potentially catastrophic decreases in their incomes and access to food. Over the past decade, therefore, policy makers and economists have increasingly focused on potential mechanisms for expanding risk management strategies available to those families. Commercially provided weather-based index insurance products, perhaps partially funded by subsidies, have been of particular interest because of their apparent potential to provide payments to smallholder families when they are most in need of help. However, the empirical evidence from a wide range of studies indicates that, absent relatively substantial subsidies, small holder farmers will not purchase commercially priced index products or even "all risk" products where payments are tied to the farm's crop losses. There are three important reasons why this is the case. First, smallholder farmers already have many ways of managing their risks, including informal community-based initiatives, on-farm production decisions and off-farm work. Second, index insurance schemes are subject to considerable basis risk; families often do not receive an index insurance indemnity when they experience a substantial crop loss on their farms. Third, the fixed costs of delivering crop insurance to smallholders make such coverage expensive. The potential market for weather index insurance therefore may be limited to insuring relatively large groups of farmers, either directly or indirectly though providing micro finance and other lending institution with coverage against widespread loan defaults associated with catastrophic events like major droughts. Alternatively, weather indexes could simply be used to more accurately target emergency aid.

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小农户的生产者保险和风险管理选择：表1。

许多小农户的收入和获得粮食的机会极有可能遭受灾难性的减少。因此，在过去的十年中，政策制定者和经济学家越来越关注潜在的机制，以扩大这些家庭可以使用的风险管理策略。商业提供的天气指数保险产品，可能部分由补贴提供资金，引起了特别的关注，因为它们显然有潜力在最需要帮助的情况下向小农家庭提供付款。但是，来自广泛研究的经验证据表明，在缺乏相对大量补贴的情况下，小农户不会购买以商业价格定价的指数产品，甚至不会购买与农场的农作物损失挂钩的“所有风险”产品。出现这种情况有三个重要原因。首先，小农户已经有许多方法来管理其风险，包括基于社区的非正式举措，农场生产决策和农场外工作。第二，指数保险计划承受相当大的基础风险；家庭在农场遭受严重农作物损失时，通常不会获得指数保险补偿。第三，向小农户提供农作物保险的固定成本使这种保险费用很高。因此，天气指数保险的潜在市场可能仅限于直接或间接地为相对较大数量的农民群体提供保险，尽管它们为微型金融和其他贷款机构提供了与严重干旱等大灾难相关的大量违约贷款的覆盖范围。或者，