The Centre on Friday launched a unified portal for agricultural statistics and named it as UPAg and termed it as a groundbreaking move to address the complex governance challenges India’s farm sector is facing now.
“This innovative platform, designed to streamline and enhance data management in the agricultural domain, marks a significant step towards a more efficient and responsive agricultural policy framework,” the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
Ramesh Chand, Member of NITI Aayog, after launching the portal, said: “Such initiative was long overdue and it has a great potential to become a great elephant from a small baby.” Suggesting the Agriculture Ministry, which will be managing the portal, to ensure data credibility, he said higher the objectivity of data, lower is the scope of judgment in policy making. This, in turn, will translate into stable, transparent and informed decisions.
“The portal will empower stakeholders with real-time, reliable, and standardised information, paving the way for more responsive and efficient agricultural policies,” the Ministry said.
Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja claimed that UPAg portal will help users to have access to credible, granular and objective data.
According to Ruchika Gupta, an adviser in the Ministry, the UPAg portal will address data-related governance challenges in agriculture such as lack of standardised and verified data and is all set to change the landscape with its comprehensive approach to data integration and analysis.
Officials said that currently, agricultural data is scattered across various sources and often presented in different formats and units. The UPAg portal aims to consolidate this data into a standardised format, making it easily accessible and understandable for users. It will bring together real-time data on prices, production, area, yield, and trade from various sources, providing a holistic assessment of agricultural commodities.