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Na tional Dairy Development Board
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WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM
THE INDIAN EXPRESS, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 201 :;

ISRO pilot study to help frame

policy on fodder, wastelands

KUMARANAND
VADOOARA, SEPTEMBERQ

IN ORDER to help policy makeD

address the growing SColrciry of
catlle-fodder in the country.
Anand-b.ased National Dairy

Development Board (N ODS)

along with Space Applications

(entre - an Ahmed.l.bad-based

arm of Indian Space Research

Organisation (ISRO) - have suecessfullyconducted it pilot study
of fodder growing are.lS and
wastelands in Banasbntha.This

study will !lOW be scaled up ,I.[

the statl' and national '-!l a top
offlCialofNDDByjd.

In this study initiated by

NODB - a fiTS( of its kind for catt~ fodder - ISRO's remote sensing technologywas used to IThIp
fodd~growing arr.uand Idler a
vil)')~level ground study was

done during the Rabi season between October 2014and M.lrdl

2015, 'The idea behind the project is Ihal the data generated
could help use available fodder
opt:imally. We can also esti1'1Ute
the availability of fodder well in
advance to help make beneT
plans in astofshortage. The pilot study was successful and it
will now be scaled at state and
then n.uionalleveL RSdid NDDB
chainnanTNanda Kumar.
&anaskantha was chosen for
the pilot study as the fanners in
the district, situ.Jted on
Rajasthan border, depend on

liYesrock.Jnddairyforliving. The
district, marred by large nurnnber of asesof poverty and largltsc.Jle migration due to droughl,
was found to have 81.000
hectare land under green fodder
and 57.000 htctaT@ofcultivable
WdSttland. Thestudy.Jlsopoints
out that.Jt lea 35 percent ofvillaies in the districl ha~ more
thOlin 5 percent w.Jsteland th.Jt
could bedeveloped to gw.N fodder.At macro IeYel the fodder
.JYililability problem does net appear that large. but at microlevel. i.e at the stolte level. the
problem vanes geographically.
For inst.J nce, states such as
Cujarat and Rajasthan will f.:dJ far
short of the (fodder ) requirement while Punjab witl have
better avaiiability,Rthe NODB
chairman added.
According to IrKlian Council
of Agrlrultural Research (JCAR~
there was a green fodder short.tgeof206million ton~ in tM
country. This shortage could rise
00400 million oonnesby 2025.
Apart from remote sensing
study, the exercise involved field
surveys that were carried out
three times, with the team
members visiting 69 villages to
verify fodder-grny.ring al'E'as. The
geographic positionofthe .Jl'E'olS
was ~ordtd using hand-held
CPS systems. The dat.J will be
further fed into an internetbased dairy geographical information system (i-OC I5~ which

has been developed by the

NODB to identiIYvillages by integrating details such as human
census, livestock census. and
land useoflhose villages to help
stakeholders monitor ;and plan
dairy development al village
l~l.

I5OO's SN:. has been working

national-level rorecasting of
seasonal crop sowing pattern for
the government through its
forec.asting Agricultural OUtpUt
Using
Space,
Agro,
Meteorological & Land-Based
Observation (FI\5AL) projea using the s.Jme remote sensing
technique. The rurrent project is
an extension of this technique
even though it was more of a
challenge as reading fodder pattern using .5.1tellites is not that
euy. Foddercrops are grown by
small.Jnd marginal f.Jrmers in
small patches of l.Jnd and are
generally mixed with regul.1T
nops, which posed the challenge of differentiating these
crops through remote sensing. a
project repon pre~rtd jointly
by the ISRO and NODB states.
s.atisticson .Jreas under foddercmp will1'1Uke it edSier for
implementing agencies to plan
for fodder development and
COl ny out .I more .,CCUr.;Ite pn>
duction forecast. The dat.J will
also help assess the availability
of g~ n fodder at district and
ta.luka levels. especi.1.11y in those
areas that f;all under dry ZOIle.
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