Union govt urges states to adopt new tech initiatives for better farm data

Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi on Thursday urged states to swiftly adopt and implement new technology-driven initiatives to improve farm production estimates and enhance data accuracy.

Addressing a national conference here, Chaturvedi emphasised the need for continuous collaboration between the central and state governments to enhance the quality of agricultural statistics, an official statement said.

The new initiatives include the Digital Crop Survey, Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES), and the revamped FASAL (Forecasting Agricultural Output using Space, Agro-meteorology, and Land-based Observations) programme.

The Digital Crop Survey is designed to provide plot-level data with geotagged areas of crops, serving as a single source of truth for accurate crop area estimation.

DGCES aims to calculate yield based on scientifically designed Crop Cutting Experiments for all major crops across the country.

The revamped FASAL programme leverages remote sensing techno