India - Agriculture ministry signs 5 MoUs to promote digital tech in farm sector

The Agriculture Ministry on Tuesday signed five MoUs with CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Ltd, ITC Ltd and NCDEX e-Markets Ltd (NeML) to conduct pilot projects for promotion of digital technology and other best practices in the farm sector.

Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said modernisation of the agriculture sector will continue by infusing new technologies so that farmers can increase their income.

He was speaking at the MoU signing ceremony here.

"MOUs were signed for pilot projects with CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Ltd, ITC Ltd and NCDEX e-Markets Ltd (NeML)," an official statement said.

Based on these pilot projects, farmers will be able to take informed decisions on what crop to grow, what variety of seed to use and what best practises to adopt to maximise the yield.

"The agriculture supply chain players can plan their procurement and logistics on precise and timely information. Farmers can take informed decisions about whether to sell or store their produce and when and where and what price to sell," it said.

A digital agriculture mission has been initiated for 2021-25 by the government for projects based on new technologies like artificial intelligence, block chain, remote sensing and GIS technology, use of drones and robots etc.

Recognizing the importance of digitization in agriculture, the ministry is creating a federated farmers database, which will be linked to land records of farmers from across the country and an unique farmer ID will be created.

"Under this unified database for all farmers the information of all benefits and supports of various schemes of Central and State Government can be kept and this can be the source for accessing information for providing benefits to farmers in the future. So far, the database is ready with details of around 5.5 crore farmers," the statement said.