Anand: Amul, Anand and ISRO, Ahmedabad together took a forward step for the benefit of dairy farmers by signing a Memorandum of Understanding for “Fodder acreage assessment using satellite observation and space technology”. The main objective of this MOU is identification/discrimination between food crops & fodder crops at village level and identifying suitable areas of current fallows & cultivable wastelands at village level for green fodder cultivation.

This is for first time in the India and probably in the world where Space research Organization and dairy cooperatives are together using satellite technology for fodder acreage estimation. Amul is procuring around 150 lakh litres of milk daily from around 35 lakhs milk producer members from more than 18500 villages under Amul Model. The milk producer farmers of Gujarat will get benefit of fodder cultivation by using this technology.

AMUL believes that the development and growth of dairy animals are highly associated with the scope of availability of fodder from cultivable land, forest, pastures and grazing lands which are crucial input for enhancing milk production and also for survival of the bovine population.

Amul has distinguished the importance of the fodder crop estimation and Space Application centre (SAC, ISRO), Ahmedabad has developed space based remote sensing for fodder crop assessment using satellite observation and space technology. Amul and SAC, ISRO have jointly carried out pilot and found that it is feasible to assess green fodder availability for dairy livestock at district and village level through remote sensing.

Fodder acreage estimation would act as a decision making tool for monitoring and planning of fodder development activities by all the stakeholders in the dairy sector. This can be widely used for drought management in fodder deficit areas as well as it would also allow measuring the wetness in cultivable land to discover probability of fodder cultivation. The use of this technology will also help provide season wise remote sensing based estimates on area under fodder crop and cultivable wastelands for dissemination of information among member unions and other stakeholders in the dairy sector.

DeshGujarat