Farm Policy: Am I covered for Bodily Injury and Property Damage caused by spray drift when spraying chemicals on my farm?
by William Speigner — Three Arbor Insurance
The answer is you may or may not be, so always ask your agent or insurance provider. Recently, I have had several row crop farmers ask me if they are covered for a Bodily Injury or Physical Damage claim to another person, their property, or other crops when spraying their own crops with herbicide, pesticide, etc. This is a good question and one that all farmers should be asking their insurance agent. The answer to this question has 3 facets/parts to it.
Part 1. It’s covered in your General Liability (GL) policy
Most often your insurance provider will have spray drift covered in your GL policy with a specific “spray drift form”. It is possible that this form is not included, so make sure to specifically ask your agent if it’s included. This will be included via form/endorsement. It will cover the following “spray drift” examples:
Part 2. It’s covered in a separate Pollution policy
Some carriers/insurance providers will not include spray drift in their General Liability(GL) policy. If they don’t, you need to ask if it is covered under your pollution policy.
Both a General Liability Endorsement/Form and a Pollution Policy can cover the following claims scenarios:
· If you are driving down the road and you get into a wreck, your sprayer is full and bust open, and the chemical contaminates the land beside the road and injures another person involved in the wreck
· If you are out spraying and the spray drifts over to another field and damages the crop that’s in the field
· If you are spraying a field and your spray drifts over onto a person nearby and burns them or makes them sick
· If you have chemicals stored in an above ground tank and the tank gets damaged and chemical spills out and causes damage to property or people.
Part 3. It’s not covered under either
The only way to know if it is not included in either is to ASK your agent or insurance provider, OR to look yourself in the policies to see if it is included. You will typically be looking for “Spray Drift” and seeing what is included or excluded. Make sure you or your agent read every word and fully understand the language in the policy to be covering certain instances of spray drift.
Exceptions(with drones/planes): There are very few carriers that will cover spray drift caused from drone, plane, etc. We do know of carriers who will cover this but only if you are only spraying your own crops. If you are spraying for yourself and several other people, it will be considered to be it’s own business and you will need to seek coverage from a carrier that specializes in this type of business insurance. If you have someone spraying your crops with their drone, plane, etc., that liability will fall on the owner of the custom spray business and the operator of the drone, plane, etc. will be covered for this if they are running a business spraying for different individuals.
If anyone has questions or wants to know if they are covered for spray drift I am here as a resource.
I would love to hear from you if you have an instance where you were/weren’t covered regarding a spray drift incident.
William Speigner
Three Arbor Insurance, Inc.
(334) 648-3551
