New Delhi: Seven agricultural projects, with a total outlay of Rs 13,966 crore, got Cabinet nod on Monday. Among these plans is the Rs 2,800 crore Digital Agriculture Mission which aims to create a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), similar to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), in the farm sector. The plan will set up a mobile-based transactions and information platform that will be helpful for the farmers.
What is Digital Public Infrastructure?
The DPI is in line with the mission of the government to provide digital solutions and is similar to its e-governance initiatives in other sectors like the Aadhaar unique ID, the DigiLocker document folder, the UPI and so on.
The three key components of DPI will be AgriStack, Soil Profile Maps and Krishi Decision Support System (DSS). These will go a long way in facilitating farmers to get benefit of a range of services.
The Digital Agriculture Mission will also help establish a tech-based ecosystem which will offer precise estimates of agricultural output. This ecosystem will be called — the Digital General Corp Estimation Survey. The farmers will be able to get accurate estimates about their production.
Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) between the Agriculture Ministry and the states to implement DPI is underway. Around 19 states are already in the process of embracing DPI.
What are the key components of DPI?
There are three key components of DPI.
AgriStack: Agritack is database of farmers which has been developed by collating statistics collected through PM-KISAN cash-transfer plan, which has bank-authenticated, land-holdings based records of almost 100 million farmers.
The AgriStack comprises three basic agri-sector registries or databases. These are Farmers’ Registry, Crop Sown Registry and Geo-Referenced Village Maps. Under farmers’ registry, the farmers will get a digital identity or Farmers’ ID like Aadhaar. This will be linked to land records, crops sown, livestock owned, demography and family details, schemes availed and so on. The Registry will provide many benefits to the farmers: making identification seamless, reducing paper work and time taken to avail schemes.
The Crop Sown Registry will be a repository of the crops planted by the farmers. It will make Digital Crop Surveys easier in every season. These surveys will help farmers to know which crops are yielding better results.
The Geo-Referenced Village Maps will give information about the geography and location of the crops.
Krishi DSS: The Krishi Decision Support System (DSS) will set up detailed geospatial system that will link information gathered from remote sensing about crops, weather, soil and water etc. This will help in generating maps about different crops, identify pattern of crops sown, monitoring flood and assessment of yield, avail crop insurance and so on.
Soil Profile Maps: These maps will study the soil in different parts of the country. The inventory will help farmers in deciding which crops to grow on a particular soil.
