Context: In big push for agriculture digitalisation, govt creates database with 5.5 crore farmers.

• It comes under digital agriculture mission which has been initiated for 2021-2025 for projects based on new technologies like artificial intelligence, block chain, remote sensing and GIS technology, use of drones and robots, among others.

Key Points

• So far government has created a database of 5.5 crore farmers and and it will be increased to 8 crore with the idea of extending the central schemes to them. 
• Once the record compilation exercise is complete, the government plans to issue a 12-digit unique ID to each farmer.
• So far, the database has been prepared for 11 states, including Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
• The remaining states, including Telangana, Kerala and Punjab, will be covered in the coming months.
• The database is being created from existing schemes such as PM-Kisan, Soil Health Card and PM Fasal Bima Yojana. 
• “All farmer data in Central schemes will be linked to land record details available with state governments. Aadhaar will be used as a deduplication mechanism.

Key Benefits

• Recognising the importance of digitization in agriculture, the department is creating a federated Farmers Database and building different services around this database so as to build digital ecosystems of agriculture. 
• Besides, linkage of land parcels through a Geographical Information System (GIS), where maps are digitised by states, will be used to access information.
• The federated farmers’ database will be linked by the land records of farmers from across the country and unique Farmer IDs will be created.
• This unified database will have information about benefits of various central and state government schemes, and can be used to access information for providing benefits to farmers in the future.

Other Initiative

• Meanwhile, in line with the same, the Centre also signed multiple MOUs for pilot projects with CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Ltd, ITC Ltd and NCDEX e-Markets Ltd (NeML).
• Based on these pilot projects, farmers will be able to take informed decisions on what crop to grow, what variety of seed to use and what best practises to adopt to maximise the yield. The agricultural supply chain players can plan their procurement and logistics on precise and timely information.