Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar informed Parliament on July 27, 2021, that the government has been planning to create a federated National Farmers Database using digitized land records. It will help to offer proactive and personalized services to the farmers.
The Union Minister assured that the government will ensure the data privacy of the farmers' personal details.
He further added that the Ministry of Agriculture in consultation with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process of bringing out a data policy for the agriculture sector.
Objective:
• The purpose behind the proposed initiative is to increase the income of the farmers by accumulating the available data and developing solutions based on the data.
• The farmers' database will ensure that the input costs are reduced, quality is improved, ease of farming is ensured, and that the farmers get better prices for their farm produces.
Feature:
It will facilitate the online sign-in facilities for universal access and usher in, inter alia, soil and plant health advisories, direct benefit transfer, irrigation facilities, weather advisories, seeds, fertilizers, market access information, lending of farm equipment to the farmers.
National Farmers Database: Highlights
• Digitized land records will be used as the data attributes for the creation of a farmers' database.
• In order to bring dynamism to the farmers’ database, linkage with the digital land record management system is essential.
• At present, the database will include only the farmers who are the legal owners of the agricultural land as per the government database. Landless farmers will not be included.
• Once developed, a federated National Farmer Database will help in delivering personalized and proactive services to the farmers.
Agristack- A digital ecosystem of Agriculture
The Ministry of Agriculture has already commenced the work of creating ‘Agristack’- a digital ecosystem of agriculture- in India.
It will help the government in effectively planning towards increasing the income of the farmers in particular as well as improving the efficiency of the agriculture sector as a whole.
In a written reply to Lok Sabha, the Union Minister informed that as the first step in this direction, the Central Government has already started building the federated farmers’ database that will serve as the core of the envisaged ‘Agristack’.
Key Points:
• No private sector company has been involved as far as the building of Agristack is concerned.
• However, leading Agri-tech/technology/start-up companies have been identified and were invited to collaborate with the Government to develop the Proof of Concepts (PoCs). They are based on small portions of data from the federated Farmers’ database for certain identified areas (village/district).
• The Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs)- purely on a pro-bono basis with selected companies- has been signed for one year to develop PoCs.
• PoCs will further help in understanding the solutions that can be built with the use of available data and some of them, will be scaled up at the national level.