The passage of Tropical Storm Isaiah near Puerto Rico on Thursday, July 30, brought us a very unpleasant revelation: Puerto Rican farmers, a very important sector, both for our economy and our life, lack options for storm insurance.

This situation requires an immediate solution from the relevant authorities. Since Puerto Rico is in the path of hurricanes and has suffered the impact of these storms so often and with frequent catastrophic consequences, it is time to find a definitive solution to this problem.

We learned this week that Isaiah left serious consequences for banana producers, who are among the top five agricultural sectors in Puerto Rico. But these producers do not have access to storm insurance.

This is because, in the private sector, there are no policies for farmers since the devastating effect Hurricane María had on that segment. Meanwhile, the only insurance company in the public sector, the Corporación de Seguros Agrícolas (CSA), offers hurricane but no storm insurance.

Javier Lugo Rullán, executive director of the CSA, an entity attached to the Department of Agriculture with nearly 4,600 landowners with insurance in Puerto Rico, says that due to cost issues, it has not been possible to establish storm insurance at the state level. The premium, the official said in an article published in this newspaper Wednesday, August 5, would be very expensive.

The official promised to seek a solution to this problem. It is important to do so. It is urgent not only to find a permanent solution for the future but to identify some alternative to help those who have already suffered losses without having anyone to complain to.

Puerto Rico is going through a new hurricane season that has already brought us a sample with Isaiah. Chances that this season will be more intensively active than usual are at 85 percent, according to weather forecasts. Between 19 and 25 tropical storms are expected to form this season, including 7 to 11 hurricanes, 6 intense ones.

This is a worrying scenario, but it is worth remembering that, as we have seen with Isaiah and on many other occasions, it is not even necessary for a phenomenon like this to impact us directly for farmers to suffer the effects.

Agriculture is a sector that, despite not receiving the attention it deserves for too long, is still in the battle for the future of the island. Although the contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product is less than 1 percent, it is a sector that, as has been demonstrated in the past, has enormous potential, and can and should be a valuable instrument in Puerto Rico´s economic recovery.

Furthermore, it can be useful to us in the arduous goal of achieving food security, which would be of vital importance in the event of any international disaster affecting maritime cargo. Currently, we import about 85 percent of the food we consume.

In the case of the banana sector specifically, there were 1,157 farms on the island with 5,207 acres dedicated to producing this essential fruit for Puerto Rico in 2018, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is not, under any criteria, an area of our economy that does not deserve attention.

We urge authorities to focus all their efforts to help the agricultural sector continue to operate and cooperate to strengthen our economy and help us achieve food security.