Drones to assess Indian crop yield for Fasal Bima settlements

Amid farmers’ protest over the farm laws, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones will be used over 100 districts growing rice and wheat to assess crop yields at gram panchayat level to ensure timely settlements of claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

The drone-based images are one of the important inputs in the models for crop yield estimation and validation. This is the first remote sensing technology-based largest pilot study being conducted in 100 districts spread in 10 States in the country so far for crop yield estimation.

Tomar said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has allowed the Department of Agriculture using drones over 100 districts growing rice and wheat to ensure timely settlements of claims under the PMFBY. The drone-based images will be captured in 10 States — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

According to Tomar, several remote sensing data-driven pilot studies have been conducted under the PMFBY across the country to determine optimum number of Crop Cutting Experiments for accurate crop yield loss at insurance unit, Smart Sampling Technique & Rationalisation of CCE & direct yield estimation.

Tomar said that the Ministry of Agriculture had engaged 13 international/ national/ private agencies for conducting pilot studies to develop technology driven approaches for direct yield estimation at gram panchayat level for kharif 2019 and rabi 2019-20 season.

Based on advanced technology used by the agencies and modelling accuracies, seven agencies (AMNEX, AGROTECH, CROPIN, ICRISAT, NIRUTHI, RMSI, WRMS) have been selected for large-scale pilot studies for kharif 2019 and rabi 2019-20 season,” Tomar said in a series of tweets on Thursday. Apart from drone-based images, high spatial resolution satellite data, biophysical models, smart sampling, CropSnap, IoT, etc, are also being used in this large-scale pilot study.

“The agencies had conducted studies in 64 districts of 15 States for 9 crops for kharif 2019 season with the help of satellite, UAV, biophysical models, smart sampling and other advanced statistics technologies for crop yield estimation. The pilot studies were continued in rabi 2019-20 season in rabi rice and wheat growing districts for validation of crop yield results obtained in kharif 2019 season,” he tweeted.

“Use of UAV data in the scheme will add new dimension to ensure timely settlement of claims in the scheme as well as for crop area estimation, losses due to localised calamities and to resolve yield dispute between different stakeholders under the scheme. The use of high spatial resolution UAV data may also be explored in other agriculture-related schemes in India”, stated the Minister.