The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoA&FW), Government of India, organized a brainstorming meeting on ‘Farm Boundary Mapping in North-Eastern States’ on 9th January 2026 at NESAC, Umiam, Meghalaya. The meeting aimed to review the current status, challenges, and future roadmap for farm-level boundary mapping in NER a key requirement under national initiatives such as AgriStack and Digital Crop Survey. The meeting witnessed participation from officials and experts of MoA&FW, Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), NESAC, State Departments of Agriculture, Directorates of Economics & Statistics, Remote Sensing Application Centres, and Departments of Land Revenue and Land Records from all NE states.
The meeting started with a welcome address from Dr. B.K. Handique, Head, Agriculture and Soil Division (ASD), NESAC followed by the opening remarks of Shri Anindya Banerjee, Adviser (Digital Agriculture), MoA&FW. Shi Banerjee elaborated importance of farm boundary mapping for farmer identification, crop-wise area estimation, and digital service delivery. Dr. J. V. Thomas, Director, EDPO Area, ISRO, highlighted ISRO’s continued support to agriculture through Earth Observation satellites, SAR data, UAVs, geospatial analytics, and capacity-building initiatives. Dr. S. P. Aggarwal, Director, NESAC, outlined significant projects and activities of the centre in space-based support for various agricultural applications in the region and reaffirmed NESAC’s commitment in providing technical support to states for farm boundary mapping initiated by MoA&FW. Dr. S. Bandyopadhyay, Director, MNCFC, appreciated the initiative by MoA&FW and NESAC and commended the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam for initiating farm boundary mapping. He emphasized the importance of standardized, region-specific approaches, integration of high-resolution satellite data with cadastral records, systematic ground validation, and adoption of common standards and SOPs.
The meeting concluded with identification of key action points, including assessment of current status of farm boundary mapping, validation of approach adopted in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, constitution of a national level advisory committee etc. The meeting concluded with a vote of thanks was proposed by Dr. Chandan Goswami, Scientist-SF, ASD, NESAC.
