Data from: Climatic damage cause variations of agricultural insurance loss for the Pacific Northwest region of the United States

Agricultural crop insurance is an important component for mitigating farm
risk, particularly given the potential for unexpected climatic events.
Using a 2.8 million nationwide insurance claim dataset from the United
States Department of Agriculture (USDA), this research study examines
spatiotemporal variations of over 31,000 agricultural insurance loss
claims across the 24-county region of the inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW)
portion of the United States, from 2001 to 2022. Wheat is the dominant
insurance loss crop for the region, accounting for over 2.8 billion
dollars in indemnities, with over 1.5 billion dollars resulting in claims
due to drought (across the 22 year time period). While fruit production
generates considerably lesser insurance losses (400 million dollars) as a
primary result of freeze, frost, and hail, overall revenue ranks number
one for the region, with 2 billion dollars in sales, across the same time
range. Principal components analysis of crop insurance claims showed
distinct spatial and temporal differentiation in wheat and apple insurance
losses using the range of damage causes as factor loadings. The first two
factor loadings for wheat accounts for approximately 50 percent of total
variance for the region, while a separate analysis of apples accounts for
over 60 percent of total variance. These distinct orthogonal differences
in losses by year and commodity in relationship to damage causes suggest
that insurance loss analysis may serve as an effective barometer in
gauging climatic influences.