In a move to develop a database of farmers which is linked to their land records, the agriculture ministry in collaboration with states has provided digital ids to 10 million farmers across 10 states as on Tuesday, according to a senior official.
Sources told FE that the move to create farmers’ digital registry is part of the government’s digital agriculture mission, which would enable farmers to access benefits from a host of schemes.
The unique IDs or referred as Kisan Pehchaan Patra contains the details of the farmers’ land holding, crops grown in the field and other details, so that it would be easier for the government to provide direct cash benefits, sanction credits, crop insurance and projecting crop yield in advance.
Out of 10 states who have initiated the programme, most of the farmers’ Ids are generated in the states – Gujarat (32 lakh), Uttar Pradesh (30 lakh) and Madhya Pradesh (28 lakh) . Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar are the other states who have started the programme for providing Ids.
Under AgriStack, 110 million farmers will be given a digital identity similar to Aadhaar, over the next couple of years. In FY26 and FY27, 30 million and 20 million farmers would get their IDs respectively.
According to estimates, there are 140 million farmers in the country and out of these around 35% – 40% do not own lands and engaged in tenancy farming.
“Sanctioning credit and crop insurance using unique Ids of the farmers would be faster while cash transfer under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM kisan) is likely to linked to these ids ,” an agriculture ministry official told FE, adding that most of the states have digitized the land records. At present, under the PM kisan, API based software checks the land records of the farmers who claim benefits.
Currently the government uses several methods such as Aadhar based self registration which are subject to exclusion criteria for identifying beneficiaries under direct cash benefit transfer such as PM Kisan – where currently 9.5 million farmers are provided Rs 6000 annually through three equal installments.
Officials said the digital agriculture mission involves Agri Stack — farmers registry, village land maps registry, crop registry and Krishi decision support system which will leverage geospatial data, drought and flood monitoring, weather and satellite data, and groundwater availability information to assist farmers in making informed decisions
The agriculture ministry’s initiative to develop a digital database of farmers is based on Karnataka’s Fruits Farmer Registration & Unified Beneficiary Information System (FRUITS) software which facilitates single registration using an Aadhar card and state’s Bhoomi digitised land record system for authenticating ownership.
In Karnataka, through FRUITS software, farmers can access benefits of schemes such as cash incentives under PM Kisan, payment for Minimum Support Price For crops, special financial assistance, caste certificate authentication and ration cards.
As a part of creating digital public infrastructure for agriculture, Finance minister Nirmala Sithraman in her budget speech for (2024-25) had said “details of 6 crore farmers and their lands will be brought into the farmer and land registries,”.