Context: Recently, Union Agriculture Minister said in Lok Sabha on the Centre’s new National Farmers Database.

Agristack initiative

• The Central government had proposed an Agristack initiative to create a digital ecosystem for agricultural sector in India.
• As part of the first step of this initiative, the government has initiated a farmers database that would serve as the core of the Agristack.
• Also a data policy is being prepared specifically for the agriculture sector in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• The Agriculture Minister has stated that the proposed National Farmers Database would be linked to the digital land record management system and would thus initially only include farmers who were legal owners of agricultural land.

Significance of the farmer’s database

• The availability of a database would serve an important role in the formulation of evidence based policies for the agricultural sector.
• Also the government can make use of the database for targeted service delivery with higher efficiency and in a focussed and time bound manner.
• Database could be used to select beneficiaries of government schemes.
• The availability of data will make it possible to implement digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Internet of Things in the agricultural domain, thus opening up the sector to the immense opportunities for improvement in productivity.

Key Concerns

• As with all such databases there are concerns about data protection and consent.
• Given the large number of landless farmers in the country and the exclusion of landless and tenant farmers in the proposed farmer’s database there are concerns over the exclusion of landless cultivators from the benefits of government schemes.