Indian sugar mills association

First satellite survey pegs sugarcane crop area at 51.82 lakh ha

Date:	23 Dec 2011

Source:	The Financial Express

Reporter:	PTI

News ID:	794

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New Delhi : The first pan-Indian satellite mapping of sugarcane has revealed that the estimated area under the crop has gone up by 5 per cent to 51.82 lakh hectare in the current sugar season, industry body ISMA said today.

The country had sown sugarcane in an area of 49.44 lakh hectare in the 2010-11 crop year (October-September), Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said in a statement.

"On a detailed analysis of the satellite mapping report, the sugarcane acreage for 2011-12 has been estimated at 51.82 lakh hectare," it added.

The latest estimate is slightly higher than that done manually by the sugar industry at 50.79 lakh hectare, by the Agriculture Ministry at 50.93 lakh hectare and the Food Ministry at 50.25 lakh hectare, ISMA said.

The survey was carried out state-wise and district-wise for the area under sugarcane, for the first time, through satellite mapping in India on such a large scale.

"Though there were some surveys carried out by some trading houses and individual sugar mills, a pan-India survey has been carried out by the sugar industry for the first time," ISMA noted.

The satellite survey was jointly undertaken by ISMA and the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd (NFCSF) through a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) based agency, which procured images from National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) Hyderabad, the body said.

Special precautions were taken to overcome issues and problems like mixed crop signature of lookalike crops by ground truthing report through physical visits or reports from mills and GPS (Global Positioning System) point collection, the statement added.

According to the sugar millers body, the government has already provisioned satellite crop surveys under `FASAL` (Forecasting of Agriculture outputs through Satellite, Agro-meteorology and Land based observations) programme.

ISMA has pegged the country`s total sugar output at 26 million tonnes in the 2011-12 season, slightly higher than the government`s forecast of 24.6-25 million tonnes, while the annual demand is estimated at 22 million tonnes.

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