10 companies to work in 30 districts for unified farmer service interface

The government, which has begun work for creating Agristack for the entire country, has entered into memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 10 technology/agri-tech companies and start-ups to develop Proof of Concepts (PoCs) based on federated farmers’ database in 30 districts in the country.

In a reply given in the Lok Sabha, Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, said Agristack will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the farmers’ income ind to improve efficiency of the agriculture sector in the country.

He said these PoCs will help in understanding the uses of Agristack and service and solutions that can be built using available data. If found beneficial to farmers, some of them will be scaled up at the national level.

Microsoft India Pvt Ltd, which has signed an MoU to develop PoCs, focuses on consolidating agri ecosystem across the value chain (farm-to-fork) to empower the farmer using data analytics in 100 villages of 10 States. The places include Guntur and West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh; Mahesana, Banas Kantha, and Amreli in Gujarat, Kaithal in Haryana; Chhindwara and Morena in Madhya Pradesh; and Hathras and Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh.

The MoU of ESRI India Technologies Ltd focuses on developing PoCs in the establishment and launch of ‘Nation Agriculture Geo Hub’ and for using its ‘ArcGIS’ platform enabling a GIS layer over farmers’ database in Chandauli and Fatehpur districts of Uttar Pradesh.

In its MoU on developing PoCs, ITC Ltd focuses on building a customized ‘site specific crop advisory’ service, digitization of dairy value chain, and on supporting wheat crop operations in Sehore and Vidisha districts of Madhya Pradesh.

Other companies that signed MoU for PoCs include Amazon Web Services India, Star Agribazaar Technology Pvt Ltd, Patanjali Organic Research Institute Pvt Ltd, Jio Platforms Ltd, Cisco Commerce India Pvt Ltd, NCDEX e-Markets Ltd (NeML), and Ninjacart - 63Ideas Infolabs Pvt Ltd.

He said companies were invited to sign MoU on a purely pro bono basis for a period of one year and develop the PoCs. The Minister said the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare has commenced the work for creating various agricultural services built around a core layer of farmers’ database (Agristack) in the country.

India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture

The department is in the process of finalising the ‘India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture’ (IDEA), which lays down a framework for building Agristacks. This ecosystem shall help the Government in effective planning towards increasing the income of farmers in particular and improving the efficiency of the agriculture sector as a whole, he said.

As a first step in this direction, the government has already initiated building federated farmers’ database that would serve as the core of the envisaged Agristack. The federated farmers’ database is being built by taking the publicly available data as existing in the department and in various data silos in the government and linking them with the digitised land records.

Stating that work on farmers’ database is in the process with the help of PM-Kisan data, he said 12,47,65,397 farmers have been registered under PM-Kisan as on February 2.

Farmers’ database shall be useful for various activities such as issuing of soil health cards, dissemination of crop advisories to farmers, precision farming, crop insurance, settlement of compensation claims, grant of agricultural subsidies, etc., he added.