AgriStack is the Indian government’s digital public infrastructure for farming: a set of state-run registries that give each farmer a digital Farmer ID tied to land records and log what is sown on each plot every season. On 24 October 2026 Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the target of 11 crore Farmer IDs had been met the day before, five months ahead of the March 2027 deadline.
For lenders, insurers, input companies and agritech firms, AgriStack is becoming the system the state uses to identify farmers, verify land and crops, and route subsidies. This guide covers who runs it, the money, the latest official numbers, what is still unsettled and what it means for business.
What AgriStack is and who runs it
The Union Cabinet approved the Digital Agriculture Mission on 2 September 2024 as an umbrella scheme for digital agriculture, according to the Press Information Bureau release on the Cabinet decision. The government had announced digital public infrastructure for agriculture in the Union Budget 2023-24 and its expansion in the Budget 2024-25. Three pieces of infrastructure sit under the mission: AgriStack, the Krishi Decision Support System and Soil Profile Mapping.
AgriStack is built in a federated structure as a joint project of central and state agencies. It has three foundational registries: the Farmers’ Registry, geo-referenced village maps and the Crop Sown Registry. All three are created and maintained by state governments and union territories, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare told the Rajya Sabha on 7 August 2026 that ownership of each state farmer registry’s data rests with that state.
A memorandum of understanding between the Centre and each state governs implementation. Nineteen states had signed one by 2 September 2024, when the Cabinet release also said the basic IT infrastructure for AgriStack had been developed and tested in pilots. The ministry describes the result as a profile of every farmer covering personal details, land records, crops grown and assets such as livestock and fisheries.
The Farmer ID and the Farmers’ Registry
Each enrolled farmer receives a digital identity, the Farmer ID, which the Cabinet release compared to Aadhaar and called a trusted “Kisan ki Pehchaan”, or farmer’s identity. The Farmer ID is meant to link dynamically to the state’s land records, livestock ownership, crops sown, demographic and family details, and the schemes and benefits the farmer has received.
A Farmer ID is created by matching a farmer’s details with digitised land records. The parliamentary reply published on 24 March 2026 said the state registries cover all landholding farmers, including women farmers and those in livestock and fisheries, and that the registry application can also onboard cultivators such as tenants and sharecroppers. The Cabinet release says tenant farmers are included in line with each state government’s policy.
States use several enrolment routes. A Lok Sabha reply on 5 August 2025 listed self-registration, Common Service Centre mode, operator mode run by state agriculture and revenue staff, and Sahayak mode. Farmers without mobile phones can register through farmer producer organisations, Krishi Sakhis and Common Service Centres, and states have held camps, according to the March 2026 reply.
The Crop Sown Registry, the Digital Crop Survey and village maps
The Crop Sown Registry records which crop is on which plot, season by season. Its data come from the Digital Crop Survey, a mobile-based ground survey run each season. A pilot ran in 11 states in 2023-24, and the Cabinet set a target of 400 districts in 2024-25 and all districts in 2025-26.
During rabi 2025-26 the survey covered more than 31.3 crore plots in 648 districts, the ministry said in its August 2026 reply. Manipur had started the survey and was taking part in Farmer ID creation. The third registry, geo-referenced village maps, ties land parcels to map locations so that surveyed plots can be matched to land records. The releases TAD reviewed give no national count of mapped villages.
Two other mission components matter to data users. The Krishi Decision Support System is a geospatial system that brings together remote sensing data on crops, soil, weather and water. Soil profile maps at a 1:10,000 scale are planned for about 142 million hectares, of which about 29 million hectares had been completed by September 2024. The Digital General Crop Estimation Survey produces yield estimates from crop-cutting experiments.
The Digital Agriculture Mission: outlay and targets
The mission’s outlay is INR 2,817 crore, including a central share of INR 1,940 crore, according to the Cabinet release of 2 September 2024. The release does not break the outlay down by component or year. Because AgriStack registries are built and maintained by states, much of the work falls to state revenue and agriculture departments.
The Cabinet set a target of digital identities for 11 crore farmers: six crore in 2024-25, three crore in 2025-26 and two crore in 2026-27. Farmer ID pilots had run in one district in each of six states: Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh, Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Beed in Maharashtra, Yamuna Nagar in Haryana, Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab and Virudhnagar in Tamil Nadu.
The Cabinet release also expected the digital crop surveys and the collection of ground-truthed data for remote sensing to provide work for about 2.5 lakh trained local youth and Krishi Sakhis. The ministry said in October 2026 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set 31 March 2027 as the deadline for 11 crore Farmer IDs.
AgriStack by the numbers: Farmer IDs and coverage
Progress has mostly been reported through parliamentary replies. As of 19 March 2026, more than 9.20 crore Farmer IDs had been generated, and the state table in the March reply added up to 9,18,69,685 across 19 states. Uttar Pradesh led with 1,99,75,651, followed by Maharashtra with 1,31,81,173, Madhya Pradesh with 1,04,30,155 and Rajasthan with 83,39,049.
The same table showed how uneven coverage was. Punjab had 75,681 Farmer IDs, Tripura 63,325 and Uttarakhand 1,50,747. By 30 July 2026 the count had reached around 102.8 million against the target of 110 million, including 24.6 million in Uttar Pradesh, Business Standard reported from the minister’s written reply.
The ministry put the total at more than 10.31 crore Farmer IDs as of 3 August 2026. On 24 October 2026, Chouhan said the 11 crore target had been completed by the night of 23 October. The ministry’s statement of 24 October 2026 added that more than 6 crore farmers had received direct benefits under various schemes through Farmer ID-based delivery. Neither the statement nor the news reports TAD reviewed included a state-wise breakdown for October.
How AgriStack links to PM-KISAN, credit, insurance and procurement
PM-KISAN, the income support scheme, has made the Farmer ID a condition for new registrations state by state. By August 2025 it was mandatory for new registrations in 14 states. A reply on 10 March 2026 said it was mandatory for new registrations in the 19 states where registry work had begun; elsewhere farmers can still register without one. By 30 October 2026, when the 24th instalment was released, more than INR 4.64 lakh crore had been paid through 24 instalments, according to a PIB backgrounder.
In a written reply on 4 August 2026, Minister of State Ramnath Thakur said the Farmer Registry was being integrated with PM-KISAN, the Jan Samarth platform for Kisan Credit Card loans and MSP-based procurement systems, according to Business Standard. For crop insurance, the ministry’s Rajya Sabha reply of 7 August 2026 said the YES-TECH initiative uses technology-based yield estimation for paddy, wheat and soybean, with artificial intelligence and machine learning among the approaches.
States have used Farmer IDs for payouts. Maharashtra transferred over INR 14,000 crore to 89 lakh farmers for kharif 2025 crop losses within five days, and used AgriStack for AI-based advisory and credit access, the March 2026 reply said. TAD has covered Baramati farm AI results cited at the World Bank report launch. Chhattisgarh uses Farmer ID and the crop survey for MSP paddy procurement, covering over 32 lakh farmers in one season.
Fertiliser is the newest link. J P Nadda, the Union minister responsible for chemicals and fertilisers, told Parliament on 24 July 2026 that a sale framework in which farmers register land and crop details and pre-book fertiliser had been piloted in 40 districts of 20 states, ANI reported.
The pilot has since widened. Citing official records, Business Standard reported on 24 October 2026 that the framework was running in about 268 districts across 30 states, with full-state rollouts begun in eight states and one union territory, and that it links Farmer IDs with the Integrated Fertiliser Management System. According to the same report, a government analysis found fertiliser sales in select border districts fell 37.56% between kharif 2025 and kharif 2026.
Consent, data protection and access for private companies
The ministry says AgriStack was built in line with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025. According to the August 2026 reply, farmers’ data is collected only with their consent, farmers control sharing with authorised entities for specific purposes, security follows the guidelines of MeitY and CERT-In, and records are encrypted so that only authorised systems can read them.
The design has always assumed outside users. A Rajya Sabha reply on 2 February 2024 described AgriStack as an open source, open standard and interoperable public good to improve access to inputs, credit and insurance, support crop estimation and market intelligence, and help agritech start-ups grow. Its listed layers included the core registries, a Unified Farmers Service Interface for states and private players, and data exchange.
What is not yet clear is the commercial rulebook. In the ministry releases TAD reviewed up to 31 October 2026, we found no published framework setting out how private companies are accredited for interface access, what they pay, which data fields they see or how consent is recorded. Our reading is that businesses should treat those terms as unsettled and plan for consent-based, purpose-limited access.
The debate: consent, tenants and fertiliser rationing
The consent model has drawn legal criticism. Writing in LiveLaw on 22 October 2026, Sarvesh JP of the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation and Deepanjana Saha of ATREE argued that consent obtained by making PM-KISAN or MSP access depend on enrolment is conditional by definition, and that sharing data with an agritech firm for credit scoring or marketing is a new purpose that needs fresh consent. They called for corporate data sharing to be frozen by statute, benefits to be decoupled from enrolment and a rapid correction channel for land record disputes.
Economists have raised the cultivator question. Two policy briefs from ICRIER by Ashok Gulati and Ramesh Chand, with researchers including Purvi Thangaraj, Ritika Juneja and Tanmoy Adhikari, backed a neutral direct cash transfer for fertiliser subsidy, Business Standard reported on 23 October 2026. They said AgriStack could provide the information architecture, but only after entitlements reflect real crop needs, identify the actual cultivator, change by season and come with safeguards on data quality, consent, privacy and grievance redressal.
The government says its aim is that no eligible farmer is left out. The ministry’s October statement said states and union territories are taking specific steps, in accordance with applicable rules, to bring tenant farmers and actual cultivators onto the platform. For PM-KISAN, the ministry says a grievance mechanism handles land and name mismatches.
What to watch after the 11 crore milestone
The headline target has been met, but coverage is uneven and several parts are still being built. Our reading of the official record points to four things business readers should watch over the next few seasons.
First, tenant and sharecropper enrolment. The registry application can onboard cultivators, but the Cabinet release leaves their inclusion to state policy, and the ministry’s October statement describes states as still taking steps. Until tenants are enrolled at scale, any scheme or sale tied to a Farmer ID will mostly reach landowners, which is the gap the ICRIER briefs pointed to.
Second, state coverage. The March 2026 table listed 19 states, and Punjab’s count was a small fraction of Uttar Pradesh’s. The reports of the October total carried no state table, so companies planning district-level use should ask state agriculture departments for current figures.
Third, the crop survey and the fertiliser link. The rabi 2025-26 survey covered 648 districts; kharif 2026 figures had not appeared in the releases TAD reviewed by 31 October 2026. Nadda put the fertiliser sale pilot at 40 districts of 20 states on 24 July 2026; Business Standard’s report of 24 October 2026 put it at about 268 districts. A national rollout would change how dealers sell.
Fourth, the access rules for private firms under the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025. Published terms for the Unified Farmers Service Interface would settle whether lenders, insurers and agritech firms can use the data directly or only through government schemes.
What AgriStack means for lenders, insurers, input companies and agritech firms
For banks, NBFCs and microfinance lenders, the practical effect is a state-verified link between a borrower, a land parcel and a declared crop, which could cut the cost of checking land and crop details for Kisan Credit Card and crop loans. The Jan Samarth integration reported in August 2026 is the route the government has named. Lenders listed in our agri finance and insurance suppliers guide will want to know how consent is logged before relying on the data.
For insurers, the Crop Sown Registry and the yield estimation work under YES-TECH and the Digital General Crop Estimation Survey point towards claims based on recorded sowing and modelled yields rather than paper declarations. The Cabinet release said Krishi DSS data would support yield assessment for settling crop insurance claims. Our view is that insurers should expect Farmer ID matching to become standard in scheme enrolment.
For fertiliser makers, seed and crop protection companies and their dealers, the fertiliser pilots are the clearest signal. If sales are tied to Farmer ID, land and crop, demand in some districts will be set by recorded entitlements rather than walk-in purchases, as the border district figures suggest. Companies in our fertilisers and soil testing category should track which districts move from pilot to full rollout.
For agritech firms and FPOs, AgriStack offers verified farmer and plot data for advisory, input sales and market linkage, but only on consent and only once access terms are published. Companies in farm software and data should design for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act from the start, and expect state-by-state differences because each state owns its registry.
Field data also depends on connectivity, since the crop survey and enrolment run on mobile apps. TAD has reported on the Maharashtra BharatNet rural broadband agreement. More coverage of digital public infrastructure for farming sits on our Precision and digital desk.
AgriStack: frequently asked questions
What is AgriStack?
AgriStack is India’s digital public infrastructure for agriculture, built under the Digital Agriculture Mission approved by the Union Cabinet on 2 September 2024. It has three registries, the Farmers’ Registry, geo-referenced village maps and the Crop Sown Registry, all created and maintained by state governments and union territories. Each enrolled farmer gets a Farmer ID linked to land records and crops sown.
How many Farmer IDs have been created?
Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on 24 October 2026 that the target of 11 crore Farmer IDs was reached on 23 October 2026, five months before the March 2027 deadline. Earlier official counts were more than 9.20 crore as of 19 March 2026 and more than 10.31 crore as of 3 August 2026.
Who owns the data in AgriStack?
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare says the State Farmer Registry is federated, so ownership of the data rests with each state. The ministry says data is collected only with farmers’ consent, that farmers control sharing with authorised entities for specific purposes, and that the system follows the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the 2025 rules.
Is a Farmer ID required for PM-KISAN?
For new registrations, yes, in states where registry work has begun. A parliamentary reply on 10 March 2026 said the Farmer ID was mandatory for new PM-KISAN registrations in 19 states. In states where farmer registry work had not started, farmers could still register without one. Existing beneficiaries were not covered by that statement.
Can private companies use AgriStack data?
The design allows it in principle. A February 2024 parliamentary reply listed a Unified Farmers Service Interface for states and private players. The ministry says sharing needs the farmer’s consent and must be for specific purposes. TAD did not find published accreditation rules, fees or data field lists for private access in the ministry releases reviewed up to 31 October 2026.
How much money is behind the Digital Agriculture Mission?
The Cabinet approved an outlay of INR 2,817 crore, including a central share of INR 1,940 crore, on 2 September 2024. The mission covers AgriStack, the Krishi Decision Support System, Soil Profile Mapping and the Digital General Crop Estimation Survey. The Cabinet release did not split the outlay by component or year.
