Farm Insurance Australia: The Complete 2026 Guide

What farm insurance actually is

Farm insurance isn't a single product — it's a category. What you're buying is a farm pack: a bundled policy that combines whichever sections of cover your operation needs. You set the sums insured for each section, pay one premium, and have one document covering the whole thing.

The sections in a typical farm pack are: property and buildings, livestock, crops, farm machinery and equipment, farm vehicles, public liability, and income protection if an insurable event shuts things down. You don't have to take all of them. A hobby farmer on 50 acres with no livestock probably only needs property and liability. A cattle station running 5,000 head across remote country needs every section properly set up.

The market changed significantly in 2025. NRMA and CGU both stopped writing farm insurance on 1 July 2025, directing their customers toward WFI. Both brands had been in the market for decades. The pool of active underwriters is smaller now, which makes the case for using a specialist broker stronger than it's ever been.

What farm insurance covers in Australia

Farm property and buildings

Property cover protects your physical structures: homestead, machinery sheds, stockyards, silage pits, irrigation infrastructure, fencing. You'll typically choose between replacement cost (what it costs to rebuild at today's prices) or indemnity (replacement minus depreciation). Take replacement cost if you can. After a fire takes out a $300,000 machinery shed, you don't want to be arguing accumulated depreciation while you're trying to get back operating.

Most policies cover farm contents too — tools, chemicals, fertilisers, hay, seed, grain in storage. The catch is sub-limits. If you've got $400,000 worth of grain on-farm waiting for the price to move and your policy sub-limits grain storage at $50,000, that's a significant gap. Check the sub-limits against your actual numbers, not the default figures.

Livestock

Livestock cover pays for death or loss from named perils — usually fire, flood, lightning, drowning, and depending on the policy, accident and disease. There are two broad structures: named peril (only what's listed) or comprehensive (broader range of causes).

WFI includes restoration costs, humane destruction, and carcass removal as additional benefits on their livestock policies. That matters — a dead 700kg bull isn't just a financial loss, it's a logistical problem that costs money to deal with. Read the disease definitions carefully before something happens. Some policies have strict notification timeframes or exclude endemic conditions entirely.

Mob cover insures a whole herd or flock at a per-head rate. For stud animals — high-value bulls, rams, working dogs — agreed-value policies are worth the premium. If you've got $100,000 in stud genetics in one paddock, mob cover at the average rate won't make you whole.

Crop insurance

Australian crop insurance divides into named peril and multi-peril. Named peril covers specific events — hail, fire, livestock intrusion, chemical overspray, in-transit loss. Multi-peril crop insurance (MPCI) covers yield shortfall from a broader range of causes including drought. MPCI is harder to get and expensive; government trials have had mixed results. For most grain growers, named peril is what's actually on the table.

WFI's Early Bird Crop Insurance covers grain crops against fire, hail, adverse weather, livestock intrusion, stored seed risks, and chemical escape. Elders (QBE) covers hail, fire, livestock intrusion, overspray, and in-transit losses. If you need drought woven into your crop cover, you're looking at a much smaller market with fewer underwriters willing to price it.

Machinery and equipment

Machinery cover protects tractors, headers, seeders, spray rigs, and mobile plant from accidental damage, fire, and theft. Machinery breakdown — mechanical or electrical failure — is a separate section. Keep that distinction clear, because when you need to claim, you'll need to know which section applies.

A new header runs $800,000 to $1.2 million. A breakdown at the start of harvest doesn't just cost you the repair bill — it costs you the weather window. That lost yield can dwarf the repair cost. Get the sum insured right on machinery, and get the breakdown section if you're running anything above $100,000 in value.

Farm vehicles — utes, motorbikes, ATVs — typically sit under a farm motor section or a standalone policy. Check how "on farm" is defined. Some policies only cover vehicles during farm operations, which creates gaps when a ute is driven on a public road.

Farm liability

Liability cover pays your legal defence costs and any damages if someone is injured on your property, or if you cause damage to a neighbour's place. Given the volume of contractors, agistees, visitors, and casual workers moving through most working farms, this isn't optional.

Elders Insurance offers flexible farm liability with standard limits starting at $10 million. If you run agritourism, a farm stay, or any pick-your-own activity, your exposure goes up sharply and you need to disclose that to your insurer upfront. Claims can be denied if visitor activities weren't declared when the policy was written.

Farm income protection

Business interruption cover bridges the gap between an insurable event and when you're back operating. Say a fire takes out your dairy shed in March. You can't milk for four months while it's rebuilt. The income section covers your operating costs during that period — not just the rebuild cost, but the income you're not earning while the shed is gone.

Setting the level is harder than it sounds on a farm. Revenue is seasonal, commodity prices move, and "normal" income is genuinely difficult to pin down. Don't set it to your average profit — set it to your operating costs plus what you'd need to service any debt during a forced shutdown.

How much does farm insurance cost?

No insurer publishes a rate card for farm insurance in Australia because there isn't one — every property is priced on its own merits. That said, here's what the market is quoting in 2026.

A small hobby farm — under 50 hectares, no livestock, no crops — can get property and liability cover from around $500 to $2,000 a year. A medium mixed farm with a homestead, livestock, grain storage, and a couple of tractors sits somewhere in the $2,000 to $10,000 range depending on location, asset values, and claims history. For large commercial operations — a 2,000-hectare cropping block in the Mallee, a cattle station in outback Queensland, a sizeable dairy in Gippsland — you're typically $15,000 to $50,000. Large broadacre operations with major asset values regularly exceed $100,000 a year.

Those numbers have moved hard since 2021. Farmers around the country are reporting premiums that have doubled from pre-COVID levels. Some have seen 20% annual increases. The Insurance Council of Australia puts it down to escalating natural disaster costs, higher asset replacement values, inflation-driven repair costs, and reinsurance pressure. Those factors aren't going away in the near term — 22% of Australian insurance leaders flagged premium affordability as their top concern heading into 2026.

The main drivers of your own premium: total insured asset value, location (flood plain, high BAL zone, cyclone region), claims history, and which sections you've included. Adding flood cover in a low-lying river catchment adds meaningful cost — but removing it exposes you fully to the event most likely to cause catastrophic loss on that property.

Who underwrites farm insurance in Australia right now

WFI (Insurance Australia Group)

WFI has been writing rural insurance in Australia since 1919 and is now the largest dedicated farm insurer in the country, operating under IAG. After NRMA and CGU both exited in July 2025, both brands directed customers toward WFI — which tells you where IAG is consolidating its rural book. They cover everything from hobby farm level through to large broadacre and enterprise operations, and are available direct and through brokers.

Elders Insurance (QBE)

Elders Insurance has been covering Australian farms for over 100 years. QBE is the product issuer and insurer behind the Elders Farm Pack, which covers property, livestock, machinery, crops, liability, and vehicles. Elders operates through local agents, which typically means you're dealing with someone who actually knows your district. Available through Elders agents and QBE-authorised brokers.

Achmea

Achmea is Dutch-owned and takes a different approach to every other insurer in this market. They come to you, walk the property, and write the policy based on what they actually see. They cover livestock, horticulture, broadacre, mixed farming, stud stock, protected cropping, and intensive operations. The standout in 2025-26 is that Achmea has built flood cover into their standard farm policies — most underwriters don't include it. If riverine flooding is a genuine risk on your property, that distinction is worth understanding before you choose a product.

Nutrien Ag Solutions

Nutrien is one of Australia's largest ag companies, operating as an Authorised Representative of Marsh Advantage Insurance. Their broking teams have been in rural communities for over 150 years. They access multiple underwriters and can put your risk out to competing quotes — useful when you want to know whether what you're paying is reasonable.

Gallagher (AJG Australia)

Gallagher is a major international broker with over 30 branches around Australia and real depth in broadacre, cotton, viticulture, and horticulture. Like Nutrien, they act as a broker rather than a direct insurer, accessing and comparing multiple products on your behalf.

What happened to NRMA and CGU?

Both stopped writing farm insurance on 1 July 2025 — including hobby farm and rural farm products — and directed customers toward WFI. If you were with either brand, it's worth confirming exactly what you've been moved to and whether the coverage is genuinely equivalent. Farm packs differ across insurers in ways that matter at claim time.

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What farm insurance doesn't cover

The exclusions are where policies diverge most sharply, and where problems surface at claim time.

Flood is the main one. Most farm insurance policies exclude flood as a standard covered event — it needs to be added specifically, and in high-risk locations it can be expensive or unavailable. After the 2022 floods across NSW and Queensland, many farmers found their policies covered the storm damage but not the inundation. The difference between flash flooding and riverine flooding in the policy wording can determine whether you're covered. Read it before the rain comes, not after.

Pest and disease damage is generally excluded. Locusts through your crop, an endemic disease through your mob — standard farm insurance won't cover it. Some specific programs exist for certain disease events but they sit outside the farm pack.

Wear and tear is excluded from property sections. Machinery breakdown from mechanical failure is a separate section — if you haven't taken that section, failure from old age isn't a covered claim. When your header's engine lets go at the start of harvest, the standard property section won't pay.

Loss of market value isn't covered anywhere in a farm pack. If the commodity price drops, that's not an insurable loss. Farm insurance covers physical damage and liability, not price risk.

Worker injuries fall outside farm liability. Workers compensation is state-regulated and handled separately. If you have any regular employees or contractors, talk to a broker about your obligations — they vary by state and the consequences of getting it wrong are serious.

Underinsurance: the one that actually costs farms

Underinsurance doesn't get talked about enough. It's the most common serious financial mistake in farm insurance, and it's largely invisible until the day you need to claim.

It happens when the sum insured is below the actual replacement cost — sometimes deliberately to save on premium, sometimes because values haven't been updated since construction and replacement costs rose sharply in 2021-23.

Most farm policies include an averaging clause. It works like this: your machinery shed costs $400,000 to replace but you've insured it for $200,000. A fire causes $150,000 of damage. The insurer argues you only insured 50% of the risk, so they'll pay 50% of the loss — $75,000. You're out of pocket $75,000 on a $150,000 repair bill.

The typical benchmark that triggers this is 80% of replacement cost. Stay above it. A shed that cost $150,000 to build in 2019 might cost $250,000 to rebuild today. If your sums insured haven't moved since you bought the property, you're very likely already underinsured without knowing it.

The same applies to machinery. If your header is worth $900,000 but you've insured it for $600,000 because that was the purchase price three years ago, you're exposed. Get machinery values reviewed every two to three years, and use agreed-value policies for anything above $200,000.

Broker or direct?

For most farms above hobby scale, a specialist broker is worth the cost. The honest case for it: farm insurance policies are genuinely complex, and the interplay between sections, sub-limits, exclusion language, and sum insured calculations takes real experience to get right. A broker who specialises in agricultural cover has seen how these policies perform at claim time. A generalist agent hasn't.

Brokers like Nutrien and Gallagher can access multiple underwriters and get competing quotes. That produces better pricing than any single direct product can offer consistently. And they sit in your corner at claim time — which matters when you're disputing a large claim and the insurer's loss assessor is on the other side of the table.

Going direct makes sense for a simple hobby farm policy with modest risk and a straightforward structure. For anything commercially significant, a specialist broker is almost always the better approach.

Stamp duty and tax

Crop and livestock insurance has been exempt from stamp duty across most Australian states since 1 January 2018. This applies automatically — no declaration needed from the farmer. If you've been paying stamp duty on your crop or livestock cover, ask your broker to check it.

NSW also has a small business stamp duty exemption for businesses with aggregated turnover under $2 million, covering a broader range of insurance types. That one does require an annual declaration to your insurer confirming eligibility.

Farm insurance premiums are generally deductible as a business operating expense. Confirm with your accountant — but insurance on an income-producing rural property is normally treated as a standard operating cost by the ATO.

Before your next renewal

Three things worth doing before you sign off another year of cover.

Get your sums insured checked against current replacement costs. If you haven't done this since 2021, you're very likely underinsured. Current valuations on buildings and machinery before renewal — not the purchase price from five years ago.

Read your flood clause. If your property sits in a catchment that's flooded in the past 20 years, you need to know exactly what your policy covers and what it doesn't — and specifically what definition of flood is being used. There's a meaningful difference between being covered for stormwater and being covered for a river breaking its banks.

If you moved from NRMA or CGU last year, confirm what you're actually on and that the coverage is genuinely equivalent. Don't assume the referral product matches your previous policy — it may, but verify it.

If you want to find brokers who specialise in your specific farm type — broadacre, cattle, dairy, horticulture, mixed farming — our matching tool takes about two minutes and gives you your top three options.

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This guide is general information only and does not constitute financial or insurance advice. Farm insurance products vary between insurers. Speak with a licensed insurance broker before making coverage decisions.

— The team at Compare Farm Insurance