States urged to adopt new technology for better agricultural statistics

27-Aug-2024 03:17 PM

New Delhi. Usually, the data released by the Union Agriculture Ministry on sowing, yield rate and total production of various crops is based on the details sent by various states.

Often there are many errors in this information and hence the data of the Agriculture Ministry sometimes does not match the reality.

This phenomenon is happening repeatedly with wheat, gram, pigeon pea (tuvar), mustard and some other crops, which not only creates an atmosphere of uncertainty in the domestic market but also makes it difficult for the government to formulate policies.

In view of this, the Union Agriculture Secretary has urged the states to use new technology and implement (adopt) better technical processes in order to estimate the production of agricultural crops.

This will help in bringing out reliable data of agricultural production. In this direction, there is a need for continuous cooperation between the states and the Center so that the quality of agricultural statistics can be kept at a high level.

The new technical processes and technologies that need to be adopted on a large scale include digital crop survey,

digital general crop estimation survey and revamped 'FAASAL' (Forecasting Agricultural Output using Space, Agro Meteorology and Land Based Observation) program.

The digital crop survey has been designed to provide data at the plot level along with the total geographical location of the crops.

In fact, various crops in the country are damaged due to floods, droughts and pest and disease attacks, but instead of making an accurate assessment of this, a rough estimate is made. This leads to a difference between the estimated production and actual yield figures.

The production estimate of the Center (Agriculture Ministry) comes out on the basis of the estimated details of the states, which sometimes becomes doubtful.