Farm aid from space

This is the title of my newest Christian Science Monitor article, which is actually about weather-indexed insurance programs in sub-Saharan Africa.  All kinds of cool science-and-tech stuff has come together in the last five years to allow big insurance companies to offer super-small insurance policies -- low-premiums, comparatively low-payout, to the usually poor, always vulnerable farmers and herders of rural SSA.  Proponents hope this can not only bring a measure of financial stability to the lives of farmers and herders, but can help close the credit gap.  And since credit is often seen as the key to leaping out of the poverty trap... Lather, rinse, repeat.