Image Processing Can Change How Governments Tackle Farm Issues
Agriculture in India has reached a tipping point where farmers are under stress due to depleting water levels, lower yields, ineffective pesticides and produce being sold below the government’s minimum support price (MSP). This is why farmers in five states are on a 10-day protest seeking policy support from the government to address these issues. Farm support programmes like crop loan waivers and MSP are expensive temporary measures for the government. Studies suggest precision agriculture as a more affordable option.
With technologies like FarmGuide’s Image Processing (IP) Labs, the government can get insights about a crop in real time, and take precaution before a crisis to reduce the risks associated with agricultural income.
Satellite imaging can generate data and monitor irrigation, whether artificial or natural, over time and is a cost-effective method to map irrigated lands. As water affects the thermal properties of plants, processing infrared imaging helps analyse and monitor irrigation patterns. The analysis from infrared imaging can be applied to pre-harvest operations. IP can also be used to identify crops using machine learning-based crop fingerprinting.
Combining IP and machine learning, FarmGuide can detect farm-level growth of pests. With this technology, governments can offer farmers customized pesticide application information.
To ensure the quality of yield, our IP Labs offers an accurate and reliable method for sorting and grading fresh produces characterized by colour, size and shape.
FarmGuide’s IP algorithms and techniques have been used to segment 13 crore farms from satellite images to gather critical insights like farm GPS location, size, production estimates, irrigation availability, and land use pattern among others. Based on this, the government can assign unique IDs to each farm and monitor its agricultural health for micro-finance programmes, setting up of supply chain infrastructure, identifying potential solar farm sites and converting wasteland into a micro-entrepreneurial agriculture hub.
By connecting markets and farmers, the government will generate more value for the produce and reduce subsidies. Its application can also be extended to verifying yield estimates, insurance claims and farm loan usage.
Village cadastral maps can also be digitised using IP and when integrated with our Patwar and Girdawari apps, it can be used for digital land mutations, harvest inspection, and other land records.
The possibilities and uses of FarmGuide’s IP Labs are vast and it can address agricultural issues at every level.
To learn more about FarmGuide’s IP Labs, kindly contact us.
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