The government is working on creating a digital ‘stack’ of ‘agriculture datasets’, at the core of which is the creation of ‘land records’.
To be done by old and unclean land records in such ‘centralized stack’; Personal and financial statements of farmers will be used without strong data protection law. And since the level of digital literacy in rural areas is quite low. Therefore, experts say that such ‘Agrastack’ (AGRISTAC) is problematic.
Regarding Agrastac:
‘Agrírestac’ (AGRISTACK), focusing on farmers and agriculture sector, is a collection of proposed technologies and digital databases by the Central Government.
Kendra Government claims, that such new databases are being prepared to deal with issues such as decrease and wastage decrease in the agricultural supply chain.
Features and Importance:
Under the Government’s goal, Microsoft (Microsoft) to develop a farmer interface for ‘smart and streamlined agriculture’ is to provide ‘essential data set’ of the farmers’ personal information.
These will help in the precise targeting of digital stores subsidy, services and policies.
Under this program, every farmer in the country will be provided an FID “Farmers’ ID) related to land records for specific identification. India has 140 million functional agricultural landworks (Farm-Land Holdings).
Due to related concerns:
This project was being implemented without ‘data protection law’.
It can prove to be a process, in which private data processing institutions can be more information about the farmer himself, about the farmers.
Without safeguards, private entities will be able to use farmers’ data as much as they want.
This information asymmetry is skewed towards technology companies, which can lead to further exploitation of farmers, especially small and marginal farmers.
Requirement:
At present, the majority of farmers across India are small and marginal farmers with limited access to advanced technologies or formal credit. Improving technologies and access to formal credit can help improve crop production and fetch better prices.
Under the programme, new proposed digital agriculture technologies and services include sensors to monitor cattle, drones to analyse soil and apply pesticides, significantly improve farm yields and boost farmers’ income.
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