Remote sensing-based transformative crop insurance for rice

A robust crop insurance system is critical to limit the impact of multivariable risks and stimulate innovation and investment in the agricultural sectors. A genuine agricultural insurance claim is lacking in India due to unavailability of accurate data. Manual data collection of cropped area, prevented sowing, failed sowing, and flood- and drought-affected areas is laborious, time-consuming, cost-intensive and often erroneous. The existing insurance procedure is not transparent, accurate and fast due to the aforesaid issues. We can overcome these problems using satellite-based remote sensing. An alternative measure of paddy crop performance through crop health factor index derived from synthetic aperture radar remote sensing data can be utilized in place of yield data in the existing area-yield insurance scheme. Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have successfully implemented this technology, which can be applied across India to make crop insurance transparent, accurate and rapid.