The government has initiated the Digital Crops Survey (DCS) on a pilot basis in 12 States starting from kharif 2023 with the aim of creating a single and verified source for the crop sown data.

Responding to a question on whether the Government plans to bolster its farm statistics system by undertaking regular digital crop surveys in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, the Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Ramnath Thakur, said the Ministry has taken initiatives such as DCS and Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES) in order to modernise the system of area enumeration and yield estimation and to enable realistic crop production estimates.

Stating that the DCS data is useful for accurate crop area estimation and development of various farmer-centric solutions, he said the survey is enabled through DCS reference application which is open-sourced and incorporates technologies such as geo-referenced cadastral maps with Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies to ensure the farmland position.

DGCES utilises a meticulously crafted survey methodology rooted in the principles of crop cutting experiments (CCEs). The introduction of the GCES mobile application and portal has ushered in a transformative era for recording CCE results directly from the field. With innovative features such as GPS-enabled photo capture and automated plot selection, this technological advancement significantly enhances transparency and accuracy within the system, he said.

MSP panel

To a separate query on the formation of the committee to review the issues of minimum support price (MSP), Thakur said the Government constituted a Committee in July 2022 consisting of representatives of farmers, Centre, State governments, eminent agriculture economists and scientists, etc.

He said the mandate of the committee was to provide suggestions to make available MSP to farmers of the country by making the system more effective and transparent, and on practicality to give more autonomy to Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) and measures to make it more scientific.

The mandate of the committee was also aimed to strengthen the agricultural marketing system as per the changing requirements of the country to ensure higher value to the farmers through remunerative prices of their produce by taking advantage of the domestic and export opportunities.

Cash crops

Asked whether a significant shift has been reported from food crops to cash crops in the country, Thakur said as per the third advance estimates 2023-24, released on June 4 by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the area under commercial/cash crops has increased from 1,82,14,190 hectares in agriculture year 2021-22 to 1,89,35,220 hectares in agriculture year 2023-24.

Evidently, the production of commercial/cash (sugarcane, cotton, jute and mesta) crops has also increased from 48,06,92,000 tonnes in agriculture year 2021-22 to 48,47,57,000 tonnes in agriculture year 2023-24, he said.

Fertilizers

Replying to a question on the availability of fertilizers, Thakur said the requirement of major fertilizers, namely urea, DAP, MOP and complex fertilizers, is assessed before the commencement of each cropping season (rabi and kharif) to ensure adequate availability of fertilizers to farmers of all the States.

As on August 5, the availability of urea, DAP, MOP and NPKS has remained comfortable across the States in the country during the current season, he said.

Giving the demand and availability figures of fertilizers from April 1 to August 5, he said the availability of urea was at 199.24 lakh tonnes (lt) against the demand of 121.09 lt. Availability of DAP, MOP, and complexes stood at 46.36 lt, 13.20 lt, and 89.63 lt, respectively, compared to the demand of 42.39 lt, 6.95 lt, and 49.90 lt, respectively, during the period.

Tea productivity

To a question on the number of small tea growers and their contribution to the national productivity, Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, said small growers in the country produced 738.34 million kg of tea during 2023-24 against the total tea production of 1,382.03 million kg in the country. This amounts to 53.42 per cent of the total production in the country.

During the financial year 2023-24, the productivity of tea produced by the small tea growers was 3,464 kg per hectare as compared to all-India productivity of 2,178 kg per hectare.

Jitin Prasada, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, said as per the estimates of Rubber Board, there are approximately 13.2 lakh rubber holdings in the country with a total area of 8,89,000 hectares. Natural rubber production in India stood at 8.57 lakh tonnes (lt) during 2023-24 (provisional) against 8.39 lt in 2022-23.

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