The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Government adopts GIS to map farmlands

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 28, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Government adopts GIS to map farmlands

By Our Staff Reporter

NIZAMABAD, APRIL 27. Nizamabad is all set to become the first district in the State to adopt the state-of-the-art Geographical Information System (GIS) to digitise all farmlands in the district along with its survey numbers.

The ongoing project undertaken with the assistance of Centre for Good Governance (CGG), is likely to be completed by June 15 after which the district administration is set to have a wealth of information about farmlands, the soil variety, the cropping pattern and other relevant details. The software package which has been developed by CGG is not only useful for the Agriculture Department but could be used by all other departments to store their information.

The District Collector, D.V. Raidu, who is the spirit behind this ambitious programme, told The Hindu on Tuesday that a pilot study was done in Nizamabad rural mandal where in all relevant details about the agriculture land, the crop variety, the type of soil, soil fertility, sowing period and harvesting time and survey numbers were recorded. The data was fed into computers by agriculture extension officers at the mandal level.

Once the experiment was found to be successful, it extended to all other mandals. The agriculture extension officers were presently compiling village-wise information about farmlands and other details. To begin with, agriculture information was being fed into computers but it was a matter of time before other departments would also be using the same package. The package is user-friendly.

Though a beginning was being made with information about the Agriculture Department, other departments would also be included soon, he added.

Mr. Raidu, said that the agriculture information provided through GIS could be used by other departments such as District Water Management Agency (DWMA), the Groundwater Department, the Marketing Department. Likewise, in a phased manner, the other information would be incorporated in computers for ready reference. All mandal headquarters were being integrated through the Internet which would provide an opportunity for officials to browse the information sitting in their offices.

The Collector said earlier it used to take a few days for the officials to compile information about various crops. With the GIS, it would be a matter of few seconds for officials to get the information, he said adding that agriculture extension officers would be updating the information from time to time.

He hoped that the data available with officials would be of immense help to farmers also. They could chalk out an action plan as to when a particular crop should be raised.

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