Production risk management in agriculture: the role of prevention and insurance.

Summary This thesis proposes a reflection on the management of production risks in agriculture. In the first part, we analyze the preventive investments of a farmer when he faces a production risk. We characterize his optimal demand for production factors and examine the effect of a second source of risk on his demand for preventive factors (chapter 1). When his final wealth function is discontinuous, we show that a risk-neutral agent behaves as if he were risk-averse or risk-averse depending on the amount of his initial wealth (chapter 2). In the second part, we analyze the role of insurance in crop risk management. After comparing the compensation systems for farmers who are victims of agricultural disasters in France and the United States (chapter 3), we examine the insurability of crop risks. We determine the optimal form of crop risk insurance contract when the price of the product is random and when the indemnity is based on an exogenous variable such as aggregate crop yields or a climatic parameter (chapter 4). The third part is devoted to the major epidemic risks on animal production. Based on a model of the dynamics of a contagious animal disease (chapter 5), we propose an economic analysis of the collective management of epidemic risks (chapter 6). Voluntary vaccination proves to be socially preferable to compulsory vaccination, except if vaccine immunity is imperfect. Simulations are carried out using a model to evaluate the economic consequences of a foot-and-mouth disease epizootic.