Centre Plans To Set Up National Farmers Database

The Government plans to set up a National Farmers Database which will consist of digitised land records and will facilitate online single sign-on facilities for universal access and provide services to them like direct benefit transfer, weather advisories, insurance facilities and information on neighbouring logistic facilities among other things.

Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar while responding to a question on farmers database during Question Hour in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, said, "the Government aims to create a federated National Farmers Database and the digitised land records will be used as data attributes for creating this database."

He informed the lower house that the database will provide personalised services to farmers such as direct benefit transfer, soil and plant health advisories, weather advisories, irrigation facilities, seamless credit and insurance facilities, seeds, fertilisers, pesticide related information nearby logistic facilities, market access information and peer to peer lending of farm equipment.

"The aim is to increase farmers' income by leveraging the available data and developing solutions based on the data so that the input costs are reduced, ease of farming is ensured, quality is improved and farmers get better price for their farm produce. If any state or states have already built such system, then the endeavour will be to make use of the same and build on top of that," the minister informed.

To begin with, he said, "the farmers' database will include farmers, who are legal owners of the agriculture land as per the government database and as endorsed by the state government. In future, the possibility of including others may be considered in consultation with states and other stakeholders.

Once the database is ready, it will help deliver personalised and proactive services to farmers. Government can make use of the database for targeted service delivery with higher efficiency and in a focussed and time bound manner, the Agriculture Minister informed further.