By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, MAY 26, 2023: A Workshop on Digital Crop Surveywas organized with the states by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoA&FW), Government of India on 25th May 2023 in New Delhi.

The event commenced with a welcome address by Dr. Pramod Kumar Meherda, Additional Secretary, Government of India who set the context of the conference. He stated that Digital public infrastructure for agriculture is built as an open source, open standard and interoperable public good. This will enable inclusive, farmer-centric solutions through relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit and insurance, help for crop estimation, market intelligence, and support for growth of Agri Techs industry and start-ups.

He further elaborated that the Digital Crop Survey will establish a clear picture of crop being sown across all the farmlands in the country during the different agriculture seasons. 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 AI/ML is, thus, a critical need to effectively address the above listed issues.

In continuation, in the context of Digital Crop Survey, Ajay Tirkey, Secretary, Department of Land Resources (DoLR), Government of India, delivered an insightful session on relevance of Geo-referenced plots and how those will be implemented, to fulfil the larger federated vision of AgriStack.

Thereafter, Manoj Ahuja, Secretary, Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (DA&FW), Government of India provided an overview of how the Digital Public Infrastructure i.e.,AgriStack and Krishi DSS will solve the issues& challenges faced in Agriculture sector. The workshop emphasized on outcomes, expectation from States and support Centre will provide to the States for effective and successful implementation of Digital Crop Survey.

Thereafter, auser manual for the Web portal and for the Mobile Application for Digital Crop Survey were unveiled followed by the foundational sessions.

Ruchika Gupta, Adviser, MoA&FW, Government of India deliberated on the Implementation plan of the Digital Crop survey advantages of DCS for various stakeholders, responsibilities of centre govt. etc.Moving forward, Rajeev Chawla, Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) & Advisor, DA&FW, Government of India presented the "Key features of Digital Crop Survey". He briefed about issues in handling Joint Ownership Plots and Dead Farmers in formation of States' Farmers Registry, Data Standards - State Registry Schema, Central Database Schema, and Crop Registry,Minimum viable features of Digital Crop Survey etc.

Hukum Singh Meena, Additional Secretary, DoLR, Government of India gave a Presentation on "Use of Geo-referencing Tool for Drones Survey". In this he explained about how to use the Geo-referencing Tool for Drones Survey and the advantages of the same.

A Demo of Web Application and Mobile App of Digital Crop Survey was also conducted by NIC officials for the understanding of the nodal officers and the technical team of the states. The Demo went further with the understanding of the Configuration and Customization of Digital Crop Survey Application by States.

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.