Digital Agri Mission

General Studies Paper-2

Context: The Union government will announce a Rs 2,800 crore Digital Agriculture Mission.

About the Mission

• Digital Agriculture Mission will pave the way for creation of a nationwide farmers registry, crop sown registry, and georeferencing of village maps.
• A budgetary allocation of Rs 28,00 crore has been made for the mission and it will be rolled out over the next two years (till 2025-26).
• The launch of the mission was initially planned in 2021-22 but due to Covid-19 outbreak, it could not be rolled out nationally.

Components

• One of the components of the mission is to create a farmers’ registry, in which every farmer will be given a unique ID
• The mission also envisages a crop sown registry.
  • This will have a record of crops sown by a farmer on his land.
  • It will help better planning and estimation of crop production.

Progress

• A pilot project has been undertaken across 6 districts — Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh, Beed in Maharashtra, Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab, and Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu.
  • Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have already started generation of farmers’ ID.
  • The unique farmer ID will allow launch of new value-added services and farmers will be able to avail various government schemes including PM-Kisan and Fasal Bima Yojana through this ID.
  • It will also enable them to avail financial services like farm loans and insurance.

Importance

• The adoption of digital technologies can help India to increase agricultural productivity, reduce waste, increase agricultural export, increase farmers’ income and improve food and nutrition security.
• Apart from this, this will help in protecting the environment and sustainable development of the overall agricultural sector.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a tool for farmers to detect crop anomalies , predict the weather,analyse soil quality, and provide required solutions
• Therefore,The Digital Agriculture Mission aims to encourage and speed up projects based on cutting-edge technologies, including AI, blockchain, remote sensing, robots, and drones.

Challenges

• There is a lack of a centralized repository for agricultural data, posing challenges for startups and organizations developing AI solutions.
• AI solutions require sensors, mechanization for precision farming and connectivity none of which are viable for a majority of Indian farmers.
• Finally, concerns of farmer data privacy and safeguards over who can access personal data need to be addressed in the solution architecture.

Other related steps

• The Union government has also launched AI programmes assisting agriculture and Kisan e-Mitra, anAI-powered chatbot that assists people regarding the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme.
• The National Pest Surveillance System uses AI to detect crop issues, enabling timely intervention for healthier crops.
• Agricultural mechanisation – During the period from 2014-15 to December, 2023 an amount of Rs 6405.55 crore has been allocated for agricultural mechanisation.
• From within the funds of Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (SMAM),
• So far an amount of Rs 141.41 crores have been released towards Kisan drone promotion
• National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA): NeGPA aims to achieve rapid development in India through use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for timely access to agriculture related information for the farmers.
• The launch of the digital platform e-NAM (National Agriculture Market) in 2016 has facilitated the integration of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMC) mandis and has provided multi-faceted benefits to farmers, farmer-producer organisations (FPOs), buyers, and traders

Conclusion and Way Forward

• Digital agriculture has excellent potential in India to resolve many of the existing problems that farmers face to realise value and provide strong competition in national and global markets.
• Its success will depend on policy and legal enablers along with significant public private partnerships.
• Realising the AI potential requires the establishment of an AI-ready ecosystem equipped with ethical frameworks, robust data-sharing mechanisms, an effective risk management protocols

Given the direction that the union and various state governments have taken in recent times along with the booming growth of agri-startups in the country, India is on the right path to transforming its agricultural sector and providing accelerated value to all farmers.