Until not too long ago, Government of India and the sugar industry manually estimated the area under sugarcane cultivation. This system involved the collection of estimates from the field and the compilation of data.

That system had a serious drawback: it was not free from human error. So sometimes it would lead to higher production of sugarcane and sometimes it would show a lower output than what had been estimated at the beginning of the season.

The manual system's other limitation, of course, was that it led to the incorrect formulation of policies at both the government and the industry level. This harmed not only the cane-growers and the sugar millers, but also the sugar consumers.

As a solution to these problems, the New Delhi-based National Federation of Co-operative Sugar Factories Ltd (NFCSF) recently decided to use remote sensing technology. This system of estimating the area under cane production had already proved effective in other sugar-producing countries, including Brazil and Thailand.

"Inclement weather, such as heavy rainfall or sunshine, severely affects the estimates. Hence it was decided that a scientific estimation of the area under cane cultivation should be carried out using technology such as satellite mapping," said Vinay Kumar, managing director, NFCSF.