Your farm is not one risk. It's a home, a business and a lifestyle, all running off the same paddocks.

Quick answerA proper farm pack covers five things, each insured on its own terms: your home and any other domestic buildings on the property; your farm buildings and fixed structures, meaning sheds, workshops, silos, cattle yards and fencing; your machinery and farm vehicles; your livestock, produce and stored feed; and your liability if someone is hurt on the property or by something connected to your farm.

The mistake almost nobody is warned about until it costs them money is how machinery gets valued. On most farm machinery, the default is sum insured or market value, whichever is lower. That means if your tractor or header is a total loss, you get paid the lower of the figure on your schedule and what the insurer decides the machine was actually worth on the day, after depreciation, heavy hours or a specialised fit-out. Agreed value, where you and the insurer settle the payout figure upfront so a total loss cannot turn into a valuation argument, is only available once that machine is registered and insured under a commercial motor policy alongside its CTP cover. Unregistered plant that never goes on a road stays on sum insured or market value, whichever is lower, no matter how it is valued. Knowing which basis your own machinery actually sits on, and keeping the sum insured figure current, is worth checking every renewal, not assuming.

Flood is not covered on any farm policy on our panel, and that holds true across the broker-distributed rural insurance market generally, not just ours. We are aware of one insurer that has started building flood into its farm cover as standard, but it sells direct to farmers only and is not available through any broker, including us. Do not assume "comprehensive" farm insurance covers flood. If flood is a genuine risk on your property, it needs to be planned for outside the policy, and we will tell you that plainly rather than leave you guessing.

If you grow cane or run horticulture, our Bundaberg office also places dedicated crop and hail cover alongside your farm pack. That is not something we can quote automatically online, so call us on 07 4331 5555 to talk it through.

Two more covers sit outside the five buckets above and are worth asking about specifically: business interruption, if an insured loss stops your income while you rebuild or replace (see Business Interruption Insurance), and equipment breakdown, for mechanical or electrical failure that is not fire, storm or theft damage (see Equipment Breakdown Insurance).

If your farm also runs contracting work with larger plant, earthmoving equipment or gear that leaves the property regularly, that usually sits better on a dedicated plant and equipment policy alongside your farm pack, not squeezed into it.

Anyone can sell you a farm policy off a comparison site in five minutes. What that five minutes will not do is explain that most farm machinery is settled at sum insured or market value, whichever is lower, not agreed value, unless that machine is registered and insured on a commercial motor policy alongside its CTP cover. It will not ask whether your farm-gate sales are actually covered, or whether the shed you built three years ago is insured for what it costs to replace today, not what it cost to build back then.

Our farm insurance specialist works out of our Bundaberg office, in the same cane, horticulture and cattle country most of our farm clients work in, not at a call centre reading a script about paddocks it has never seen. That specialist will tell you plainly that no insurer on our farm panel currently covers flood, rather than let a "comprehensive" farm policy imply cover that is not there. If you grow cane or run horticulture, the same office can also place dedicated crop and hail cover alongside your farm pack.

We are not going to claim a special process for every type of farming operation, because we do not run one. What we do is treat your machinery schedule and your sum insured as things that need checking against how they are actually valued, not assumed, and tell you honestly where cover such as flood simply is not available anywhere on the broker market right now, rather than sell you the comfort of a policy that does not do what you think it does.

1. Not telling your insurer about farm-gate sales, farm stays, market stalls or letting groups use your land for camping or events. A private farm policy is written for private farming activity. The moment paying members of the public are regularly on your property for something other than farming, that is a different risk, and if you have not told your insurer, a liability claim from a visitor can find your policy does not respond the way you assumed.
2. Assuming your machinery is agreed value when it almost certainly is not. Most farm machinery, tractors and headers included, is settled at sum insured or market value, whichever is lower, and agreed value only becomes available once that machine is registered and insured on a commercial motor policy alongside its CTP cover. If your gear does not meet that condition, the figure that protects you is an accurate, current sum insured, not an assumption that agreed value is already in place.
3. Sheds, silos, cattle yards and fencing left off the schedule or valued at what they cost to build years ago. These are usually cheaper to insure properly than owners assume, and expensive to discover were undervalued after a fire or storm.
4. Assuming emergency agistment and fodder costs are automatically covered, or covered without limit, after a bushfire or flood destroys pasture. Where this cover exists it is usually sub-limited by dollar amount and by time, so it is worth knowing your actual limit before you need it, not after.
5. Buying new machinery, adding a shed, or expanding into a new activity (a bigger herd, a new crop, a farm-stay sideline) without updating the policy. A farm pack is only as good as the schedule behind it, and the schedule is only accurate the day someone last checked it.