What is Agristack and how will it work?

July 25, 2024

In the 2024-25 Budget, Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister, called for a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for the agriculture sector. The goal of this DPI is to connect more than six crore farmers to a formal land registry system through a project called Agristack.

What is Agristack?

Agristack is a digital framework that is meant to build a complete database for farmers that includes information about their identity, land records, income, loans, crop information, and insurance history. It uses data from farms and information that comes from government APIs.

Data Sources

The information for Agristack will come from three main databases:

Farmers Registry: Gives each farmer a unique digital ID that is tied to their Aadhaar and land records.
Geo-referenced Village Maps: These maps show how farms look and keep track of crops through digital surveys.
Crop Sown Registry: This uses satellite data and remote sensing technology to make accurate maps of crops.

Agristack was started by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2021 based on the suggestions of a task group. Its design was spelled out in a white paper, which led to pilot projects in several states.

Purpose of Agristack

Agristack wants to make it easier to get information, cut down on unnecessary copies, and improve the accuracy of agriculture records. This unified method will help farmers plan their sales and assist the government in putting the scheme into action and keeping an eye on it. e-Nam, eChoupal, and NeML are some of the applications that will be part of the framework. These will give farmers important information about the weather, market supply lines, and storage.

Stakeholders Involved

It is the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare that is in charge of Agristack. Private companies like Amazon and Microsoft work together on some use cases, but they don’t have direct access to Agristack data yet. Some problems that could happen are old land records and the speed at which things are being digitized, which could make Agristack less useful. To solve land border disputes, you need a strong way to settle disagreements.

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