New Delhi Dec 19 (IANS) The Agriculture Ministry has proposed National Programme on use of Space Technology for Agriculture (NPSTA) envisaging integrated use of space and geo-spatial tools for mapping monitoring and management of agriculture Parliament was told on Tuesday.
The new integrated programme will have four sub- programmes catering to various themes --crop assessment and monitoring; agricultural resources management disaster monitoring and mitigation and satellite communication and navigation applications Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
All the current running programmes such as FASAL (for crop forecasting) NADAMS (for drought assessment) CHAMAN (for horticultural assessment and development) KISAN (for crop insurance) and Crop Intensification planning will be subsumed under this proposed programmes he said.
Shekhawat also said the ministry had proposed to set up 500 numbers of seed production and seed processing units at Gram Panchayat Level to increase the availability of certified and quality seeds to the farmers locally.
--IANS
spk/him/vd
