Space technology for crop acreage estimation and production forecasting

Photo: Prasad

Abstract: Crop production forecasts using satellite remote sensing data has been conceptualised at Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad in early eighties under Crop Production Forecasting (CPF) project. Its success led to the CAPE (Crop Acreage and Production Estimation) project for Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW) towards forecasting of production of crops in the major growing regions. In order to enhance the scope of this project, the Forecasting Agricultural Output using Space, Agro-meteorology and Land based Observations (FASAL) programme was conceptualised by developing methodology for multiple in-season forecasts of crops at national scale. A centre named Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC) was established by MoA&FW in New Delhi in April 2012 which operationally uses space-based observations for national level pre-harvest multiple crop production forecasts of nine field crops.