Agriculture Ministry's to collect horticulutre data

New Delhi, July 9 (UNI) A Core Group, constituted in the Ministry of Agriculture, will identify base line data in the horticulture sector at the district and cluster level for evaluating the impact of programmes as well as for validating the existing estimates.

The States will be equal partners in providing the required data input to complete this task,said the Agriculture Ministry sponsored National Workshop on ''Improvement in Agricultural Statistics'' which concluded here last evening.

The other recommendations of the Workshop are: full harnessing of horticulture production performance; holding frequent meetings with the States for monitoring the growth and performance of agriculture sector; importance of Horticulture Directorate in getting more consistent with data; use of space technology with ground truthing to be used on a larger scale; efforts to be made for online transfer of district level data on agriculture and emphasis on developing short duration varieties of wheat and postponing / advancing of sowing season to minimise the impact of untimely variations in temperature.

The Workshop suggested enacting of statistical legislation on the lines of Population Census and Industrial Statistics to conduct and complete the agriculture census and pointed out the need to have an Act of Parliament for its timely completion. Statutory powers are needed for the Agricultural Census Commissioner of India and State Agricultural Census Commissioners, the Workshop recommended.

Inaugurating the Workshop, Ms Radha Singh, Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) emphasized the need for timely and reliable data on the agriculture sector, since important decisions relating to production, investment, procurement, imports and exports are taken based on these data.

She referred to the importance of area and production estimates being brought out by Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad based on remote sensing and suggested that States should also make full use of this technology.

Horticulture development has been accorded high priority in the 10th Five-Year Plan. The National Horticulture Mission is one of the major initiatives taken by the Government in this regard.

States' representatives held the view that although well laid out methodology and drill are adopted in collection and estimation, in the recent past sudden changes in temperature, specially in the case of wheat have played spoilsport with the estimates. To deal with the problem of decrease in yield levels of wheat due to untimely temperature variations, development of short duration varieties was suggested apart from advancing or postponing the sowing operations in the major wheat producing States.

The two-day workshop was attended by more than 150 participants from the State Governments and Central Organisations, namely Central Statistical Organisation, National Sample Survey Organisation, NCAP, Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute and Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.

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