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Govt holding off on making enrolment a must for farmers digital agri ecosystem
The agriculture ministry is, however, speedily moving to create a core digital base for the farm economy, which supports half of all Indians, with currently available public data.
The Union government is holding off on a decision to make it mandatory for farmers to enrol in a sprawling digitised agricultural ecosystem being built to connect farm services companies and cultivators following privacy concerns expressed by farm unions.
The government is currently involved in a series of discussions with experts around privacy and data protection to take a view on enrolment of farmers in the digital infrastructure that will hold critical economic data – from land records to farming patterns – potentially worth thousands of crores of rupees, said officials aware of the development said.
“It is unlikely that farmers will be forced to join in. They will have a choice,” one of the officials added, asking not to be named.
The agriculture ministry is, however, speedily moving to create a core digital base for the farm economy, which supports half of all Indians, with currently available public data. The ministry is in the process of “finalising an India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)”, which lays down a framework for building Agristacks, which are channels of data related to farmers, according to a second official.
The Modi government wants to transition towards a fully market-driven digital farm economy, which contributes nearly 17% to the GDP of Asia’s third-largest economy.
Such a move will help the government in better planning, raise farmers’ income, and bring efficiency to the sector dominated by a majority of poor smallholding peasants, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said in Parliament on Tuesday.
Farm unions have been deeply sceptical of the government’s farm policies. In December, ahead of crucial elections in states, the Modi government cancelled three controversial farm laws that had sparked protests by hundreds of thousands of farmers.
The unions have also rejected policies announced in the recent Union Budget to harness startups, drones and digital tools to spur farm incomes, demanding instead a law to guarantee assured minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce.
“What will drones do? How will farmers afford drones when farmers don’t get even minimum prices?” said Hannan Mollah, a leader of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the platform of farm unions behind a 14-month long agitation of farmers.
While the government wants more private participation in the vast agriculture sector, farmers fear big corporations will dictate prices, monopolise services, and make them vulnerable to exploitation.
Digital repository
In September 2021, the agriculture ministry signed agreements with five private firms to push its project to harness big data from the farm sector for the digital ecosystem, a move the government hopes will bring new technologies and greater private investment.
The digital repository aims to aid precise targeting of subsidies, services and policies. The database will assign each farmer of the country what is being called a FID, or a farmers’ ID, linked to land records to uniquely identify them. India has 140 million operational farm-land holdings.
The hi-tech database will be available publicly with the idea of giving agribusinesses unprecedented insights into the rural economy and even individual land parcels, allowing them to target farmers with customised products.
Digital tools can create customised farm services. For instance, data on soil quality of a landholding will enable firms to precisely offer those farm nutrients that are deficient, cutting down use of those that are in excess.
Officials said the database will connect seemingly simple data points: the number of occupational farmers, how much land they own and where, what they grow and which agro-climatic zones they fall in. “These data points will be triangulated, throwing up a far more complex but illuminating picture of the agricultural economy,” said an official of one of the companies with whom the government has signed an agreement.
The next step will be to create a model to monetise the data, he added. The five companies the government has signed contracts for the database are CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Limited, ITC Limited and NCDEX e-Markets Limited (NeML).
I-T experts said digital services could drive up productivity, but the issue is of data rights.
“Once a drone flies over a farm, a company will have very minute data related to it. This will help firms provide accurate services but once they own the data, they can manipulate prices by creating lock-in periods for farmers,” said Parminder Singh, the executive director of the non-profit IT for Change. Singh advises SKM on digital farm policies.
To begin with, the proposed farmers’ database is being built with data of farmers already registered under PM-Kisan, a cash transfer scheme for landed farmers. Nearly 80 million eligible farmers currently receive cash handouts under PM-Kisan. Farmers willing to join the digital ecosystem voluntarily may have an option to do so.
