The Digital Crop Survey (DCS) in Dindigul district has reached only about 60% coverage, even as the original September 30, 2026 deadline approaches. The district has around 2,47,600 hectares under cultivation, including approximately 1,03,000 hectares of horticultural land, making the survey a large and time-consuming exercise for field officials.
The survey, which began in July 2026, is being carried out by officials from the Agriculture and Horticulture Departments along with registered volunteers. Its purpose is to collect accurate, real-time information about crops cultivated by farmers so that the government can improve agricultural planning, policy decisions and distribution of welfare benefits. Officials use the Crop Survey (O) App developed by TNeGA and the Uzhavan App while visiting individual agricultural fields.
A major challenge is the shortage of personnel. Officials said Dindigul has only around 210 agriculture and horticulture officers available for the extensive fieldwork. A single officer can reportedly cover roughly 10–20 hectares and complete around 100 entries in a day, making it difficult to survey such a large cultivated area within the deadline. Travel between villages, individual survey-number subdivisions and remote farms further slows the process.
Volunteers were expected to help speed up the work, but officials said participation has remained limited. Volunteers are reportedly paid ₹3 for each survey entry, which authorities say has not attracted enough people for the scale of work required. As a result, agriculture and horticulture officers have been carrying much of the survey workload themselves.
The digital system uses GPS-based geo-fencing and satellite imagery to identify and verify individual agricultural plots. Field officers also photograph crops, and the images are stored with their geographic coordinates. Although this technology helps improve accuracy, officials still have to physically visit the subdivisions within each survey number, making the process labour-intensive.
Tamil Nadu Farmers Association’s Dindigul district president A. Ramasamy said the survey is valuable because reliable field-level crop information can improve government planning and farmer-support schemes. However, he said the size of the district and the large number of individual land parcels have made completing the survey within the original schedule difficult.
Agriculture officials have acknowledged that the September deadline is unlikely to be met. They plan to request an additional two to three weeks from higher authorities and expect the remaining survey work to be completed by the end of October 2026. Once finished, the digital database is expected to provide a more accurate picture of crops grown across Dindigul and help authorities make better decisions on agricultural assistance, planning and welfare distribution.