An insurance or warranty method protects financial interests of producers, such as farmers planting transgenic varieties of seed as a primary asset, who use proper refuges of similar but non-transgenic, secondary assets for maintaining a non-resistant pest
population. Refuge acre methods, now sometimes called "refugia", as such are recently known in
crop pest management, but producers have had no effective incentive and much risk in using them. That is, losses in the refuge from pests, as to corn from European Corn Borers and others, are immediate and could be severe, whereas build-up of resistance to the related control technique is a long-term problem. Providing insurance as part of the cost of the
primary production input, or as an add-on "technology fee" or the like, for protecting a set amount of the similar, secondary asset, removes the risks from the pest in producing secondary assets in the refuge. This method helps enforce refuge plan conditions such as size and location of the refuge in relation to that of the primary asset. This insurance or warranty method has broad application in
pest control technique management, to
genetically modified crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, and the like and in
animal husbandry such as in fish and
shellfish farms and
disease control in
livestock management. It applies to other control techniques such as spraying with insecticides, and to many pests such as
European Corn Borer, corn rootworm, corn ear worm, cotton boll
weevil, Colorado potato beetle, and the like. When a claim for damage to a secondary asset in a refuge is to be adjusted, the insurance or warranty adjuster may check first for refuge condition compliance (and also can assess development of resistance of the pest species in the primary asset), and will then assess damage from the pest to the secondary asset. The decrease in yield times the
crop price is determined and paid to the producer in cash at
harvest time, in seed the following season, or in another agreeable fashion in accordance with the insurance policy or warranty terms.