India: Farm Data Set to Get Space Tech Boost

The quality of India’s agriculture sector statistics could soon improve with the government tapping satellite imagery technologies to upgrade the yield estimation and acreage measurement exercise, according to an article on TheHindu.com.

India’s farm output forecasts tend to see wide variations between preliminary reports and the final estimates, which typically are released well over a year after sowing. Inaccurate farm data not only ends up distorting market prices for food items but also muddle growth estimates for the overall economy.

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“If we can combine traditional technology of acreage, yield estimation with satellite imagery through a small hand-held device, in which — when acreage is recorded and crop cutting experiments are done — it will be possible for you to not only get the traditional estimates but also the geospatial coordinates on which this experiment was done,” said TCA Anant, Chief Statistician of India. He said work was underway on implementing this as the requisite technology-backed applications were in place.

Read more at TheHindu.com.

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