- Union Minister Tomar tweeted about DCGA’s approval to agri department to use drones for clearing insurance claims under PMFBY
- PMFBY has undertaken several studies for facilitation of implementation of agricultural schemes
- Advanced Statistics technologies like high spatial resolution UAV data would also be explored in near future
TAD NewsDesk, New Delhi: Aimed to guarantee timely clearance of claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) scheme, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has approved the proposal of the agriculture department for flying drones over 100 districts. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar tweeted,
“To ensure timely settlements of claims under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has approved the proposal of Department of Agriculture for flying the drone over 100 districts growing rice and wheat.”
“This is the first remote sensing technology based largest pilot study in the country so far, conducted for crop yield estimation,” he added.
Useful in assessing the crop yield in different districts growing wheat and rice, High Spatial Resolution Satellite data, Biophysical Models, Smart Sampling, CropSnap and IoT are also under study. Apart from drone images, several Remote Sensing data-driven pilot studies are being conducted across the country. PMFBY has undertaken this research to determine the optimum number of Crop Cutting Experiments for accurate crop yield loss at insurance unit, Smart Sampling Technique and Rationalization of CCE and direct yield estimation.
“This Department 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”, informed the Union Minister.
The mentioned agencies have conducted studies in 64 districts of 15 States for nine crops for Kharif 2019 with the assistance of Satellite, UAV, Biophysical Models, Smart Sampling and other Advanced Statistics technologies. These were further continued in Rabi 2019-20 in Rabi Rice and Wheat growing districts for validation of crop yield results obtained in Kharif 2019.
“In view of outstanding results of pilot studies, the Expert Committee has recommended that there is a large scope of use of technology under PMFBY for GP level yield estimation,” said Tomar.
“The use of UAV data in the scheme will bring a new dimension to ensure timely settlement of claims in the scheme as well as for crop area estimation, losses due to localized calamities and to resolve yield dispute between different stakeholders under the scheme,” he added.
So far, seven Agencies (AMNEX, AGROTECH, CROPIN, ICRISAT, NIRUTHI, RMSI, WRMS) in the technology sector have been assigned the responsibility of carrying out large-scale pilot studies for Kharif 2019 and Rabi 2019-20.
In the future, technologies like high spatial resolution UAV data would also be explored to implement agriculture-related schemes in India successfully.irecr
Source – Hindustan Times
