Nirmala Sitharaman announces implementation of DPI for agriculture over next 3 years in Budget 2024

Experts said that lending to the agriculture sector always needs a cautious approach as it has higher chances of turning non-performing assets (NPAs).

Government has set out an ambitious plan to facilitate implementation of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in agriculture over 3 years, bringing over 6 crore farmers under the formal land registry system, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while presenting the Union Budget 2024 on July 23.

"Buoyed by the success of the pilot project, our government, in partnership with the states, will facilitate the implementation of the DPI in agriculture for coverage of farmers and their lands in 3 years," Sitharaman said.

As part of the project--namely Agri Stack--the government also plans to conduct digital crop survey for Kharif in 400 districts this year.

"The details of 6 crore farmers and their lands will be brought into the farmer and land registries. Further, the issuance of Jan Samarth based Kisan Credit Cards will be enabled in 5 states," the finance minister said.

The government had announced for development of DPI for agriculture as an open source, open standard and inter-operable public good for better targeting of reforms and subsidies for farmers.

A critical part of the project was--Agri Stack--the central data base for farmers’ information, including their digital identity, holdings and crops under cultivation.

The project has been in the pilot phase for the past few years among states. Once implemented, it would provide the relevant and verified data to identify genuine farmers (Farmer ID), pinpoint the farm location (Farm ID) through geotagging and track what crop they are growing (Crop Survey).

The latest Economic Survey released on July 22 noted that the centralised database has now been fairly well developed in the major states and can provide the right tool through which the fertiliser subsidy may be better targeted.

Agri Stack comes under the ambitious “Digital Agriculture Mission 2021-2025” of the Ministry of Agriculture. The launch of the mission was initially planned in 2021 but was delayed due to pandemic.