Falling Crop Yields Point Towards A Crisis In Agriculture

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New Delhi: — experienced severe drought conditions in both 2002-03 and 2003-04 reflected in a steep fall in sugarcane yields. Even the premier cane producing region in the country, Uttar Pradesh, experienced a drop in yields.

The Pawar agenda of making the farmer a global player is, no doubt, a paradigm shift in thinking about Indian agriculture. But before benchmarking our yields with the rest of the world, there is a warrant for checking the fall in the rockbottom yields of our principal crops.

Govt To Monitor Crop Area And Production From Space
Our Bureau
The central government is planning to introduce a “Crop Acreage and Production Estimation (CAPE)” scheme aimed at developing and upgrading the methodology of area and pre-harvest production assessment of crops using remote sensing technology. This scheme is being implemented in collaboration with the department of space.

Union minister of state Kanti Lal Bhuria, while replying to a question by Ajay Maken in Parliament said that the government proposes to establish a mechanism for obtaining timely and reliable advance estimates of area and production for which “it has been decided to implement a project called Forecasting Agricultural Output Using Space, Agro-meteorology and Land-based observations (FASAL), as an umbrella scheme”.

According to the proposal, implementation of FASAL project is envisaged in phases over the remaining period of Tenth Five Year Plan and the Eleventh Plan.

The minister said that the “FASAL project has been conceived after gaining experience in the use of remote sensing technique for estimating area and production for specified crops (covered under CAPE)”. In addition, he said that it aims at integrating agro-meteorology, land and space borne measurements, using the principles of econometrics, to make early and in-season multiple forecasts of area and production of major crops.

The minister also stated that the department of agriculture and cooperation was in the process of institutionalising a mechanism for FASAL implementation around its National Crop Forecasting Centre (NCFC) along with the Department of Space (DOS), India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the State Remote Sensing Centres, Agricultural Departments and State Agricultural Statistics Authority (SASA).