Now, govt to gauge crop damage with drones

In a major decision aimed at providing immediate relief to distressed farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare has decided to introduce drone into the services of taking the stock of crop damage during natural catastrophe. Informing about this initiative, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said, “It’s the farmers who faces face double whammy when they lose their crops in natural calamities. At first their crops get damaged and secondly they have to run from post to pillar to get their crop damage status assessed by the ground level officials of the concerned ministry.”

“In present situation, a farmer has to take several rounds of to and fro visit from block to district office to get their area of damaged crop assessed, which delays in submission of report from states resulting in unnecessary delay in release of relief grant from the Centre,” Singh told Millennium Post.

“The use of drone services in assessing the affected areas will be very effective as it will be GPS enabled, which will exact data in few hours. The data of a district can be compiled in few days and sent for approval to Centre. The whole process will take lesser time in comparison to the conventional formula,” the minister said, adding that Centre will immediately release the grant after verifying the collected data.

Apart from this, there are several other new reformative changes have been suggested in the new crop insurance scheme, which is all set to be launched next month. The new scheme aims to keep the premium burden on farmers below 3 per cent.

The Centre on Wednesday launched two mobile phone applications that will enable farmers get information related to crop insurance and prices of agri- commodities in different mandis across the country. The AgriMarket Mobile App and Crop Insurance Mobile App have been developed by the in-house IT division of the Agriculture Ministry and can be downloaded from Google Store or mKisan portal.