Agritech startup CropIn partners with Centre to help estimate crop yield accurately

Government of India has partnered with Bengaluru-based agritech startup CropIn Technologies to streamline the CCE (Crop Cutting Experiment) process and make it more accurate and scalable.

CCE is an assessment method that was employed by the Government of India as part of its Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), launched in 2016. CCE is aimed at accurately estimating the yield of a crop in a region during a given cultivation cycle.

However, under the influence of climate change, weather fluctuations, and other variable factors, the traditional method of CCE such as surveys, made accurate data collection difficult. Such challenging situations resulted in the government to have a robust system for assessing crop loss and fool-proofing the insurance claim settlement process.

According to a statement released by the startup, the goal of this partnership is to prevent improper data collection and provide complete digitisation of farms and farmers-level data.

AI and data-led CropIn will help the government in providing technical support to conduct reliable, accurate, and large scale CCE within a short harvesting window and limited manpower, using its capabilities such as live reporting, analysis, interpretation, and insight that span across geographies.

Commenting on the partnership, Jitesh Shah, Chief Revenue Officer, CropIn Technologies said, “In the last two years, we have done substantial work with the government to optimise the CCE process for cotton, paddy, maize, and other crops in states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka. CropIn's solutions have helped these states to significantly reduce the processing time for settling insurance claims. CropIn's efforts are aligned with the PMFBY's vision to have a database of land records of all farmers in the country by October 2020, and link insurance policies to the land records."

The government uses the data gathered from CCE to disburse payment for farmers’ insurance claims. The PMFBY requires each state to carry out at least four CCEs in every village panchayat for each crop and submit the yield data to insurance companies within one month of harvest.

The government will be leveraging CropIn’s digital platforms such as SmartFarm and SmartRisk solutions to ensure that these claims and payment processes are backed by data, and are as accurate as they can get.

In 2019, CropIn had partnered with the government to conduct experiments on cotton crops in Jalna district of Maharashtra; on soybean and paddy crops in Sehore and Jabalpur districts in Madhya Pradesh respectively; and on cotton and paddy crops in Bellary and Koppal districts in Karnataka respectively.