Centre Plans to Digitise all Farm-oriented Schemes for Benefit of Farmers

The government is planning to digitise all its farm-oriented schemes or programmes and make sure farmers are paid procurement prices directly, by maintaining an Aadhaar-based database that will also map the landholdings of beneficiaries, according to officials. They said that in the initial phase, the database will contain details of as many as 50 million farmers across 9 states.

Joint secretary of the newly created Digital Agriculture Division, Vivek Agarwal said, “The database, to be completed by 30^th June, will have satellite imaging of individual farm land so that farmers could be provided advisories based on the kind of land they have and the crop they grow”.

Agarwal, who is also the CEO of government’s ambitious PM-Kisan yojana, said the database might be shared with farm technology firms for developing innovative solutions to boost productivity. The database would also help ensure direct benefit transfer or DBT in the bank accounts of authentic cultivators.