A Satellite Watching Over Haryana’s Farms Is Helping the State Save Rs 300 Crore Per Year |
Imagine a satellite hundreds of kilometres above Earth quietly watching a wheat field in Haryana — and spotting water stress before the farmer even sees it. Sounds like science fiction? It’s happening right now.
In May 2026, the world noticed. Haryana received the Geospatial Excellence Award at the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam for a satellite-powered system that does exactly what school textbooks promised: using space technology to help farmers on the ground.
The international jury praised Haryana’s Space Applications Centre (HARSAC) for building a practical, scalable system that tackles food security, environmental sustainability, and climate resilience together — rather than treating them as separate challenges.
How Haryana makes it work
HARSAC, set up in 1986 and working under the Citizen Resources Information Department and working with ISRO and the National Remote Sensing Centre, has created a “unified geo-enabled ecosystem built around the concept of ‘Space to Citizen Service’."
Today, the system supports over 15 lakh farmers across one crore fields and is used daily by more than 4,000 officials, including revenue officers, patwaris (village-level accountants), surveyors, and agricultural planners.
At its heart, the platform brings together satellite imagery, remote sensing data, GIS dashboards, mobile apps, UAV surveys, and AI analytics in one operational layer. Through this, HARSAC provides:
Crop monitoring and yield assessment
Crop........