The Center has called upon states and Union Territories to transition to a digital approach for estimating crop area and production, citing the existing manual system’s drawbacks. The move aims to eliminate delays and errors in crop data assessment. Here are the key developments:
Shift to Digital Crop Survey
The Economics, Statistics and Evaluation Division (ESED), a part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, has devised guidelines for improving the accuracy of agricultural production estimates. These guidelines have been shared with states and UTs.
The directive states that all states and UTs should implement the Digital Crop Survey system for crop area enumeration and girdawari, starting from the 2024-25 Agricultural Year. In India, the agricultural year commences in July and concludes in June the following year.
Utilizing Technology
As part of the guidelines, states and UTs are instructed to employ GPS-enabled mobile applications to collect data about crops sown in each plot during various seasons. The data should then be shared at the village level with the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare (DA&FW) using an Application Programming Interface (API).
Reducing Manual Efforts
The Ministry acknowledges that the current method of collecting and compiling crop statistics is predominantly manual, resulting in delays and errors. Only a handful of states, such as Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh, have adopted digital data collection systems, particularly using GPS-enabled mobile apps for crop area and Cost of Cultivation of Crops (CCEs) data collection directly from the field. Other states like Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have digital systems for crop area recording. However, the need for technological intervention to enhance the production estimation system has been recognized.
Challenges in Data Reliability
Concerns have been raised about the reliability of agricultural production data under the existing system. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman emphasized the need for real-time crop assessments, noting that India has faced difficulties due to the absence of dependable agricultural production estimates.
Key Requirements for Digital Crop Survey
States are required to develop digital applications for recording weekly sowing progress, which should be shared with the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare through APIs on a weekly basis. The Digital Crop Survey aims to capture essential data, including village names, year, season, farmer and farm IDs, crop names and varieties, crop areas, geotagged photos of crops, geotagged boundaries of crop plots, planting dates, irrigation details, and sources of irrigation.
Pilot Initiatives
The Center had previously launched a pilot Digital Crop Survey in a dozen states, paving the way for this broader digital transition in crop assessment.
In a separate change, the ministry has revised the timeline for estimate releases. Instead of five phases, they will now release the final estimates covering all states and all seasons in September-October, eliminating the fourth phase that was previously released in August. This marks a significant shift in the timeline for providing crop production estimates. Previously, the final estimates were published in February of the following year.
