Agristack: The New Digital Push in Agriculture

Subject: Science and Technology

Section: Agriculture

Concept:

The government is working on a digital ‘stack’ of agricultural datasets, with its core as land records

About AgriStack:

It is a collection of technologies and digital databases that focuses on farmers and the agricultural sector.
AgriStack will create a unified platform for farmers to provide them end to end services across the agriculture food value chain.
It is in line with the Centre’s Digital India programme, aimed at providing a broader push to digitise data in India, from land titles to medical records.
The government is also implementing the National Land Records Modernisation Programme (NRLMP).
Under the programme, each farmer will have a unique digital identification (farmers’ ID) that contains personal details, information about the land they farm, as well as production and financial details.
Each ID will be linked to the individual’s digital national ID Aadhaar.

Need:

At present, the majority of farmers across India are small and marginal farmers with limited access to advanced technologies or formal credit that can help improve output and fetch better prices.
Among the new proposed digital farming technologies and services under the programme include sensors to monitor cattle, drones to analyse soil and apply pesticide, may significantly improve the farm yields and boost farmers’ incomes.

Potential Benefits:

Problems such as inadequate access to credit and information, pest infestation, crop wastage, poor price discovery and yield forecasting can be sufficiently addressed by use of digital technology.
It will also fuel innovation and breed investment towards the agricultural sector and augment research towards more resilient crops.

Issues with the move:

Agriculture has become the latest sector getting a boost of ‘techno solutionism’ by the government.
But it has, since then, also become the latest sector to enter the whole debate about data privacy and surveillance.
The project was being implemented in the absence of a data protection legislation.
Since the signing of the MoUs, several concerns related to sharing farmers’ data with private companies are raised.
The development has raised serious concerns about information asymmetry, data privacy and consent, profiling of farmers, mismanaged land records and corporatization of agriculture.
The formation of ‘Agristack’ also implies commercialization of agriculture extension activities as they will shift into a digital and private sphere.