Agriculture Ministry is Planning to bring the Data Policy for Farming Sector

Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar stated on Friday that the government intends to develop a national database of farmers and is also working on a data strategy for the farm sector. "The government plans to construct a federated National Farmers Database, and the digitised land records would be used as data attributes for creating this database," Tomar said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. The connectivity with a digital land record management system is critical for bringing dynamism to the farmer's database.

As of now, he added, the federated farmers' database is being constructed by taking publicly available data from the Department of Agriculture and other government data silos and tying it to digitised land records.

"This Department...is in the process of developing a data policy for the agriculture sector in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology," Tomar added.

The database is intended to provide online single sign-on facilities for universal access and to usher in tailored services for farmers such as direct benefit transfer, soil and plant health advisories, weather advisories, irrigation facilities, and seamless credit and insurance facilities.

It will also include information on seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides, as well as neighbouring logistic facilities, market access information, and peer-to-peer loans of farm equipment.

"The goal is to raise farmers' income by utilising available data and developing data-driven solutions so that input costs are decreased, farming ease is ensured, quality is increased, and farmers earn a higher price for their agricultural produce," Tomar explained.

The Unified Farmers Service Interface/Agristack will have a data interchange that will bring in all agriculture-related data in a federated platform with the federated farmers database as its core.

In order to establish UFSI/Agristack, the department is finalising the 'India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA),' which would lay out a framework for the country's digital agriculture sector.

"A Task Force has been formed, and in addition, a concept paper on IDEA has been floated for comments from the general public not only through the department's website but also through emails, particularly to subject matter specialists, agro-industry, farmers, and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)," Tomar said.

The IDEA would aid in the establishment of the country's Agristack architecture, which would serve as a platform for the development of innovative agri-focused solutions utilising emerging technology, according to the minister.

Disclaimer: All the data mentioned in this article is only for information purposes and is fetched from reliable sources.

Sources:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/agriculture-ministry-to-bring-data-policy-for-farm-sector/articleshow/84896347.cms