Straight answer: during procurement season, a mandi or rice sheller should prioritise camera coverage at the weighbridge and gate over the open yard, because that's where disputes and theft concentrate — and skip face-recognition enrolment for casual seasonal labour, since the workforce turns over too fast for enrolment effort to pay back.
Ludhiana's mandis and rice shellers run two different years. For most months, it's a manageable site — a fixed crew, predictable stock levels, a security setup that was probably adequate when it was installed. Then paddy or wheat arrives, and for a few weeks the yard fills with more grain than the rest of the year combined, the labour headcount triples with people nobody has worked with before, and the weighbridge becomes the busiest and most disputed point on the property.
Security plans built for the quiet months don't hold up here, because the risk doesn't scale evenly — it concentrates hard at three points.
Where does the real risk sit during procurement season?
The weighbridge. This is where arhtiyas, farmers and buyers all have a stake in the same number, and where a disputed weight can mean a disputed payment. It's also usually the least monitored point on site, because it was never treated as a security location — just a scale.
The gate. Every vehicle in and out, every bag movement authorised or not, passes through here. During peak arrivals this becomes a bottleneck of trucks, tractors and loose bags, which is exactly the cover under which unauthorised movement is hardest to notice.
The open yard. Bags stacked in rows, often with no wall on at least one side because a wall would slow down the loading and unloading the season depends on. Stock sitting here for even a few days at peak season is worth far more than the same yard holds the rest of the year.
Cameras spread evenly across the site under-cover all three. The order above is the order that matters.
How should a weighbridge actually be monitored?
Point the camera so it captures the weight reading and the load being weighed in the same frame, with a timestamp. When a farmer or buyer disputes a weight later — and during a busy procurement week, someone will — you want to be able to pull the exact reading rather than relying on the operator's memory or a handwritten slip that can be redone.
This is a small, specific fix and it's the one most mandis skip, because the weighbridge was set up as a scale, not as a point that needed evidence.
Why doesn't face recognition work well for seasonal labour here?
This is worth being honest about, because it's the opposite of how we'd usually pitch face recognition. Enrolling a worker takes a few minutes and needs a reasonably clean photo set. When your labour force is genuinely temporary — arriving for a few weeks of procurement and gone once the season ends — the enrolment overhead outweighs what it buys you. You'd spend more staff time managing enrolment than the system saves you in attendance accuracy.
What actually helps in that window is simpler: general camera coverage of the yard and gate so movement is recorded even without individual identification, and a basic daily headcount at the weighbridge or gate rather than an automated per-person log. Save face-recognition attendance for your permanent crew, where the enrolment cost is paid back many times over across the year.
How do you secure a yard that has no real perimeter?
Most mandi yards can't be fully walled during peak season — trucks need wide access, and a wall that slows down unloading costs more in delayed procurement than it saves in security. The practical fix is corner cameras covering the approach roads and stack rows, not full perimeter fencing.
Lighting matters more here than camera count. A yard that's brightly lit deters far more than an extra camera pointed into darkness — most yard theft during a busy procurement week happens after dark, precisely when the yard is fullest and the crew is most stretched between the weighbridge queue and loading.
What should you check before the next arrival season starts?
Walk your weighbridge and check whether the camera actually captures the display, not just the vehicle. Then check whether your gate camera can handle the truck queue at peak hour without blind spots created by parked vehicles. We build camera-based systems for sites like this, so weigh that against your own read of the site — but the weighbridge fix alone is worth doing regardless of who does it.