Agricultural insurance preferences of apricot farmers: the case of Malatya

ABSTRACT: Malatya is an important production centre of apricots in Turkey, and the world. However, a major problem causing product loss, is late spring frosts. Cold damages the flowers and thus, fruit set and yield decrease. As a result, the farmer’s income fluctuates from year to year. This study, stated apricot farmers demographics, and technical features of 52 interviewed apricot farms, in Malatya. Also, conjoint analysis (CA) is used to identify the farmers’ preferences for agricultural insurance attributes. This method investigated the joint effect of a set of independent variables, on an ordinal scale of a measurement-dependent variable. Of the farmers, 76.9% have done agricultural insurance last year.