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Agricultural risks, given climate change and the crisis of globalization, are increasingly considered as national security risks. In global practice, insurance has proven to be one of the most successful and sustainable ways to manage agricultural risks. In the Russian Federation, agricultural insurance is also state-supported, which emphasizes the importance of containment of agricultural sector hazards. However, the level of insurance penetration in Russian agriculture is insufficient. Indices in agricultural insurance, i.e. insurance in which insurance payments are made not on the basis of the assessment of damage to the insurance object, but on the basis of the behavior of a special index, are used in many countries around the world. The main idea of index insurance is that there is no need to establish the fact and calculate the amount of loss, which makes it especially demanded for those activities in the real sector of the economy where speed, transparency and simplicity of insurance payments are important, as well as the need to attract additional well-trained employees to carry out the insurance process and claims settlement. Reduced workload due to the absence of the need to calculate the amount of loss reduces the time required to process claims. The procedures of claim settlement in index insurance can be called the most simplified for the client and the least costly for the insurance company, but the advantages and positive features of index insurance do not end there. The authors have investigated and systematized the possibilities of index insurance, for which they also considered the successful experience of a country with similar socio-cultural codes, Mexico, in the field of agricultural index insurance. The article also suggests ways to overcome the difficulties of index insurance implementation in the Russian insurance realities. The positive features of the index insurance identified by the authors can make it a promising alternative to classical (traditional) insurance, including for the further development of agricultural insurance with state support.