The Digital Farm Mission

GS Paper - III

The recently launched Digital Farm Mission (DFM), is undoubtedly a welcome move to improve productivity, resilience of farming systems and attain environmental sustainability. The scheme has two foundational pillars: the Agri Stack and the Krishi Decision Support System.

Fundamental pillars

  • The Agri Stack project will contain three core registries: (1) Farmers’ registry, (2) geo-referenced village maps, and (3) crop sown registry.
  • Krishi Decision Support System will create a comprehensive geospatial map by aggregating crop, soil, weather, and water data for analysis and actuation.
  • So, it is an opportune time to conjecture the probable impacts of the Digital Farm Mission on agricultural ecosystems and explore how the mission can effectuate a networked development by orchestrating the roles of centers, states/UTs, technology start-ups, and market agencies to improve (information) governance, infrastructure and data sharing, reduce (operational) bottlenecks in public services delivery systems.

Probable impacts

  • A few central sector schemes and programmes as use cases are considered to decode the DFM would impact.
  • These use cases include minimum support prices (price support scheme), PM Kisan, soil health cards, Kisan credit cards, and crop insurance programs (PMFBY). probable impacts of the Digital Farm Mission.
  • First, the service delivery of MSP-based procurement to farmers and procurement agencies comes to the fore.
  • Agri Stack’s farmers’ registry, crop-sown survey registry, and geo-referenced village maps would help the government (centre and states) plan MSP targets and generate GIS-based optimal MSP procurement centres.
  • Second, using the Agri Stack’s farmers’ registry and GPS-enabled coordinates of farmers’ landholdings, the PM Kisan scheme that provides farmer annual income support of ₹6,000 can reduce the inclusion-exclusion error and enhance farmers’ coverage.
  • Third, the soil health card (SHC) program will initiate a common digital form backed by multiple front ends for data entry, supported by Krishi Tantra, the Jio platform, and other service providers.
  • Fourth, Kisan credit card applications by farmers and bank sanctioning would be contactless and hassle-free.
  • Fifth, farmers’ crop insurance (PMFBY) programme registration, premium payment, insurance underwriting, and claim settlement processes will be real-time that will mitigate the moral hazards and adverse selection for the insurers and insured (farmers).
  • Sixth, as the central government will share 68 per cent of the DFM budget and is expected to spend the amount by FY 2025–26, the 22 states/UTs which already signed MoUs with the centre should fast forward to create and maintain core registries of Agri Stack.
  • Seventh, several agri-techs start-ups of different lifecycle stages have been harnessing the potential of digitalization in agricultural sectors spanning precision agriculture, uberization of farm mechanization, and farm to fork electronic traceability systems.

 

  • To sum up, the mission must improve digital services delivery and the digital capacity of smallholder farmers to achieve producers’ level goals, namely technical and allocative efficiencies and societal goals such as reducing policy-related transaction costs, attaining equity and environmental sustainability.

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