The insurance policy will cover losses and assist businesses if fish cannot be shipped out.
In Japan, the insurance company, Tokio Marine Nichido, has announced plans to begin selling an insurance policy for operators of land-based fish farms in the country.
Available from January next year, the insurance policy will cover losses and assist businesses if fish cannot be shipped out, reports leading Japanese newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Over the past year, there a number of natural disasters have affected the production of salmon at sea in Japan.
Read more: Storms across northern Japan cause catastrophic damage for Aomori fish farm
When compared with farming in the sea, land-based fish farms minimise the risk of damage from natural phenomenon such as red tides and typhoons, which may lead to more stable production.
The insurance policy for land-based fish farming will cover losses in such events as the fish becoming unable to be shipped due to infectious diseases, contamination of the water or changes in water temperature.
Losses in sea cultivation, which has been the primary form of fish farming in Japan, are typically covered jointly by fisheries cooperatives through mutual aid schemes.
Until now, insurance policies for land-based fish farming have covered only damage to hardware as fire insurance, and thus there has not been a policy that covers loss of the fish themselves.
Recently however, an increasing number of major companies have been entering the land-based fish farming business in Japan.
The Kyushu Electric Power Company, plans to build a salmon-farming facility inside the precincts of its Buzen electric power plant in Fukuoka Prefecture. The company will launch the business together with fish farmers in the next fiscal year at the earliest.
Read more: 3,000 tonnes land-based salmon farm planned at Japanese power station
Mitsui & Co. has also invested in a start-up which operates fish farms in Saitama and Chiba prefectures.
