PMFBY: Govt testing modern tech for assessment of crop damage

As many as nine pilot studies have been rolled out in 11 states to test the effectiveness of modern technologies in assessing the extent of yield loss for payment of crop insurance claims, the government said Tuesday.

The pilot studies are being carried out in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

Currently, the crop cutting experiment (CCE) -- the traditional random survey method -- is used to estimate crop yields of a location.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana (PMFBY), states are required 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. It has become a challenge to conduct CCEs in a short span considering 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in India.

In this backdrop, the Agriculture Ministry wants to use modern technologies to get the crop yield figures faster and accurately for payment of crop insurance claims. A workshop was also conducted on nine pilot studies here Tuesday.

"The Government of India has rolled out nine pilot studies on optimisation of CCE using modern technologies aiming to resolve various challenges faced by the Scheme," the ministry said in a statement.

The nine pilot studies are conducted in 23 districts spread across 11 states. The study is expected to be completed by February 2019, after analysing the use of technology in particular areas of crops during 2018 kharif season and crops in rabi season of 2018-19, it said.

The pilots are being conducted by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), SatSure, Space Application Centre (SAC), Skymet, CropIn, Niruthi, Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI)and Weather Risk.

Technologies like scalable yield mapper for integrating remote sensing data in crop growth simulation model, crop detection algorithm, crop health monitoring, Integrated Sampling Methodology using remote sensing, deep stratification, index based insurance for flood, intelligent and smart sampling technique, among others are being piloted in the field.

"The inclusion of such technological interventions is expected to address the issues of large number of CCE being conducted during short harvesting window with limited manpower," the ministry said.

Such technology-based solutions will help in achieving the objective with limited resource, more accuracy, resulting in timely settlement of claims and will further facilitate to reduce the unit area of insurance to a level lower than the present village and panchayat level, it added.