Agri alerts to help Telangana farmers maximise yield, get best price

​Hyderabad:  From now on, all farmers in Telangana will get alerts on the status of the crops they are raising in advance.  The Telangana state government has introduced a unique GPS technology to predict the yield, requirement of water and marketing facilities from the date of sowing to harvesting in every acre in all agricultural seasons. 

The new technology has been developed by the state Irrigation department in association with NRSA (National Remote Sensing Agency). The new technology has already been applied on pilot basis in the last season. Based on the successful outcome, government decided to apply the technology across the state from the ongoing kharif season.  
    
State irrigation officials said that the department has completed mapping of ayacut that comes under every minor, medium and major irrigation projects by using the advanced IT applications in the state. Before the beginning of every agricultural season, officials said that the NRSA will measure the availability water at every project site including ponds and small water bodies. The same information will be passed on to the agriculture department which is authorised to suggest the farmers the crop pattern to be adopted in every season.

The department will also monitor closely the status of crops everyday through the GPS technology. The information regarding the requirement of water during harvesting season and the readiness of the standing crops will be passed to the agriculture department.  

Officials said that the new technology will help to predict the yielding from the crops in advance and alert the marketing department to make the arrangements for the marketing of the produce. In the pilot project conducted at some irrigation projects, officials said that the advanced technology helped to assess the total crop yield and water management and took necessary measures to protect the farmers from the damage to crops.  

The department succeeded by drawing accurate results compared to the old system of manual assessment of the crops by the Agriculture department. The officials said that the new technology will also help the government to evaluate total acreage that comes under cultivation in khariff and rabi to make arrangements for the supply of required fertilizers, seeds and also storage facilities for the perishable like vegetables and chillies.