insuring risk in small-scale agriculture faces particular problems that are not usually encountered by the broader insurance sector. production relies on natural conditions, such as rain, temperature, and sunlight, which cannot be controlled easily by poorer farmers, other than by those with access to irrigation or plastic tunnels in the case of horticultural crops. consequently farmers face problems on a regular basis. unlike other insurance, adverse events cannot easily be predicted statistically, large numbers of people tend to be affected at the same time (known as "covariance" by the insurance industry) and losses for each of them tend to be significant. the opposite is the case for more traditional insurance such as home theft insurance, where actuaries can make a good forecast of the likely incidence of claims, thefts are (relatively) rare, all the houses on a block are not entered at the same time, and entire contents of a house are not usually stolen.