The Agriculture Ministry inked five Memorandums of Understanding with CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Ltd, ITC Ltd, and NCDEX e-markets Ltd (NeML) on Tuesday to launch pilot projects to promote digital technologies and other best practices in the agricultural sector. These initiatives are aimed at enhancing farmers’ revenue and ensuring the safety of their crops.
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar stated that the agricultural industry will continue to be modernised by incorporating new technologies in order for farmers to boost their income.
“Farmers will be able to make informed decisions on what crop to produce, what variety of seed to utilise, and what best practises to follow to maximise the yield based on these pilot projects,” Tomar added. Players in the agriculture supply chain can organise their procurement and logistics based on accurate and timely data. Farmers may make educated judgments about whether to sell or store their produce, as well as when, where, and at what price.
Digital Agriculture Mission (2021 -2025)
The government has launched a Digital Agriculture Mission for the years 2021-2025 to fund initiatives based on new technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, remote sensing and GIS technology, drones and robots, and so on. Any endeavour to transform the agricultural sector must incorporate ecosystem thinking as well as a digital ecosystem.
The agriculture value chain includes public and commercial participants in agricultural inputs and services, as well as logistics, and goes from crop selection to crop management and market. Interoperability, data governance, data quality, data standards, security and privacy, as well as stimulating innovation, must all be considered while establishing a digital ecosystem for agriculture. Adoption of a decentralised, federated architecture that guarantees autonomy to service providers and all other actors while still ensuring interoperability is a key necessity. Recognizing the importance of digitization in agriculture, the Department is developing a federated Farmers Database and many services surrounding it in order to create Digital Agriculture Ecosystems.
The land records of farmers from across the country will be linked to the federated farmers’ database, and a unique Farmer ID will be created. The information of all benefits and supports of various Central and State Government programmes can be preserved in this unified database for all farmers, and this can be the source for obtaining information for giving advantages to farmers in the future. The database currently contains information on over 5.5 crore farmers.
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