On the occasion, a manual for web portal and mobile application for digital crop survey was unveiled.
“To move ahead with the initiation of Digital Crop Survey in the states, MoUs were signed between the state governments of Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan,Uttar Pradesh and government of India,” an official statement said.
Digital crop survey is part of the government’s Agristack or India Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture (IDEA) that has been under development since 2020.
Addressing the workshop, agriculture secretary Manoj Ahuja said Agristack and Krishi-Decision Support System (Krishi-DSS) will solve the issues and challenges faced in the agriculture sector.
The workshop deliberated on the implementation plan of the digital crop survey, advantages for various stakeholders, responsibilities of the central government.
The workshop also emphasised on outcomes, expectation from states and support the Centre will provide for effective and successful implementation of digital crop survey. “The digital crop survey will establish a clear picture of crop being sown across all the farm lands in the country during the different agriculture seasons,” said Pramod Kumar Meherda, Additional Secretary in the agriculture ministry.
The project aims to create one verified source of truth about the farmer and his/her crop-sown data.
A robust, effective, on-time, transparent digitally driven crop survey system that uses the latest technological advancements such as visual and advanced analytics, GIS-GPS technologies and artificial intelligence and machine learning, is, thus, a critical need to effectively address the above listed issues, he added.