Enhancement of Crop Cutting Experiments by NSO

The National Statistics Office (NSO) is expanding the number of Crop Cutting Experiments (CCEs) to improve crop yield estimates and farm output projections, which are crucial for policy decisions like export curbs.

Implementation Details

• Goal: The estimates for crop production using this data will be prepared for the kharif and rabi harvest seasons of 2025–26. 
• Precision: An increased CCE sample size is aimed at enhancing the precision of yield estimates. 

Methodology of CCEs

• CCEs involve harvesting, threshing, and weighing a specific plot to estimate crop yield.
• Expands the estimation to new crops like berries, avocados, dragon fruit, and kiwi, which current methods do not cover.

Challenges with Current Methods

• The current manual method only covers major crops like rice, maize, and jowar.
• Inaccuracies in crop production numbers affect decision-making and lead to issues such as unnecessary export bans.
• Example: Wheat production estimate increased from 106 million tonnes to 107.7 million tonnes, affecting market dynamics.
• Cotton output was revised from 36.21 million bales to 31.20 million bales, leading to supply issues.

Policy Implications

• Frequent revisions in estimates lead to misguided price projections and inflation strategies.
• Harsh policy measures like export bans and stock limits are sometimes wrongly employed due to inaccurate projections.

Future Steps and Enhancements

• NSO plans to hire around 130 retired government officials as consultants to supervise area enumeration and yield statistics.
• The increased sample size aims to improve clarity in projections and policy formulation.