Digital Crop Monitoring Guidelines Notified for 2025

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) has released guidelines for Digital Crop Monitoring (DCM) effective April 2025. Key highlights:

• Remote sensing & drones: States are encouraged to adopt satellite/drone imagery to validate crop acreage and loss assessments.
• Standard data formats: All crop data submitted to central systems must adhere to GeoJSON formats with timestamped imagery.
• Pilot schemes: Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh will run district-level pilots in 2025 kharif.
• Integration with PMFBY: Crop cut experiments can be replaced by technology-backed estimates where accuracy benchmarks are met.

What it means for you

1. FPOs can partner with agri-tech platforms to supply field data and earn service fees.
2. Drone service providers need to align their output with DCM formats (NDVI, LAI, etc.).
3. Insurance claims may get processed faster if digital evidence is submitted within 48 hours of loss.

DeshSeva is preparing an onboarding toolkit to help FPOs, state departments and startups comply with these new standards. Reach out if you’d like to participate in the pilot program.