Center asked state to hold digital crop survey from July 2024

Center asked state to hold digital crop survey from July 2024

Subject: Geography

Section: Economic geography

Context: The Centre has asked states and Union Territories (UTs) to digitize the process by adopting the Digital Crop Survey System from July next year.

More about the news:

• The Indian government’s plan to modernize the estimation of crop area and production, which is currently a manual process leading to delays and errors.
• The government has asked states and Union Territories to adopt a Digital Crop Survey system starting from July next year.
• Under these guidelines, states and UTs will use GPS-enabled mobile applications to collect data on crop sowing and share it with the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare.
• Currently, only a few states have such digital systems in place.
• The government aims to improve the accuracy and timeliness of agricultural production estimates through technological intervention.
• This move is prompted by concerns about the reliability of existing agricultural production data.
• Additionally, the ministry has revised the release timeline for estimates, moving the final estimates for all states and seasons to September-October, replacing the previous release in February.

What is the Digital Crop Survey:

• As part of the Digital Crop Survey, the MoA&FW has asked states to collect information on “basic parameters”, including –
  • Village name, year, season, farmer ID, farm ID,
  • Crop name (at farm plot level),
  • Crop variety,
  • Crop sown area (at farm plot level),
  • Geotags of crop photos,
  • Geotags of farm boundary where the crop is sown,
  • Sowing/planting date (at farm plot level), irrigation type (at farm plot level), and
  • Irrigation source (at farm plot level).
• This move comes after the Centre launched a pilot Digital Crop Survey across a dozen states earlier this year.
• In a separate move, the MoA&FW has also revamped the timelines of the estimate release.
• As per the earlier system, the ministry used to release estimates in five phases. However, now the ministry has decided to do away with the fourth phase that had been released every August.
• The ministry will release the final estimates covering all states and all seasons i.e. kharif, rabi, summer in September-October.
• Earlier, the final estimates used to be released in the month of February, the following year.

What are the guidelines for the Digital Crop Survey:

• According to sources, the Economics, Statistics and Evaluation Division (ESED) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW), has finalized the guidelines.
• According to the guidelines, all states/ UTs shall automate/digitize the process of area enumeration/girdawari of crops at field level, i.e., Digital Crop Survey, from 2024-25 Agricultural Year.
• In India, the agriculture year begins in July and ends in June, the following year.
• Under the guidelines, states and UTs shall use GPS enabled mobile application for collecting crop sown data of each plot for each season and share the village level aggregated data with DA&FW through API only.