Microwave remote sensing can reinvigorate Crop insurance
Climatic changes may have drastic effects on Agricultural yield as agriculture is extremely dependent on land-atmosphere interactions. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) launched in 2016 with an objective to provide insurance protection to farmers against crop losses due to these unforeseen events. The scheme was launched to protect the farmers when these climate extremes occur and to encourage them for greater investment in crops. However, in Practice, Insurance companies are benefitting more than farmers.1. Proper functioning of this scheme can be ensured by estimating the loss and risk involved in agriculture production in near real time. Accomplishing these steps manually is time taking and tedious and may lead to delays in settlements 2.
Many times, the spatial-temporal variation of yield is observed in the same agriculture land because of the spatiotemporal variation of soil structure and properties and hence this variability should also be taken into account while calculating insurance claims. The knowledge about the effect of hydrologic and anthropogenic activities on Earth system helps to model these land-atmosphere interactions and can predict extreme events or estimate the risk. Agro-hydrological variables such as Soil moisture, evapotranspiration, vegetation indices etc can be monitored in near real time to analyze the variability in crop health spatiotemporally. Agro Hydrological variables due to its inherent memory can “remember” extreme climatic events long after the conditions responsible for the anomaly is forgotten by the atmosphere, is a key aspect of land-atmosphere interactions and hence can predict risk in agriculture production. With the emergence of satellite sensors, agro hydrological variables can be modeled and analyzed in near real time.
Satyukt Analytics Pvt Ltd expert in microwave remote sensing is capable of estimating the risk in agriculture production and can calculate the crop insurance spatiotemporally.
