The Uttar Pradesh government will conduct a digital crop survey – e-Padtal – to determine the status of crops in all the districts of the state.
The objective of the survey is to protect farmers from crop loss due to seasonal changes and to provide them the benefits of government grants and schemes and enhance their incomes.
The government has not only cleared the obstacles for commencing the inspection of crops through digital survey in the current Kharif season, the roadmap has been decided for other digital crop surveys in the state, including Rabi and Zaid.
The purpose of this specific survey is to develop an eco-system and database by working as a single, verified source by determining the reality of data related to crops in the state, so that the department can update the conditions in real-time through data and is able to carry out the action by undertaking assessment.
Data from 35,983 e-Padtal clusters under 31,002 accountants in 350 tehsils across 75 districts of the state will be included in this survey. The status of crops, their photographs and other related data will be compiled in each of the clusters. On completion of the compilation of data related to crops in the survey, it will be able to present a detailed description of their status in the form of a database. On the basis of this, the departments will be able to get information about many important aspects, including providing the benefits of the schemes to the farmers and helping to determine the price of the crops.
Presently, the state’s Kharif season began on June 15, and consequently, the preparation for the Kharif season survey has started. It is believed that the survey will be conducted in the Kharif season between August 10 and September 25.
The time period for the survey has been fixed from January 1 to February 15 for the Rabi season and May 1 to May 31 for the Zaid season. At the same time, another special survey can also be conducted in the month of October, if needed.
To conduct the survey, ‘district master trainers’ in each district and ‘tehsil master trainers’ at tehsil level will be identified and trained in a three-day workshop at the Directorate of Agriculture at Lucknow.
The surveyors, supervisors and verifiers of Lucknow circle will be given training at Lok Bhawan in Lucknow while the surveyors, supervisors and verifiers of other districts will be imparted training at the district headquarters. Twelve state master trainers of assistant commissioner level have been identified and trained in order to conduct this survey.