Digital Identities to Farmers: The Government has approved the Digital Agriculture Mission.

The Government has approved the Digital Agriculture Mission in September 2024 with a total outlay of Rs. 2817 Crores. The Mission envisages the creation of a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for Agriculture, such as AgriStack, Krishi Decision Support System and a comprehensive Soil Fertility & Profile Map to enable a robust digital agriculture ecosystem in the country. This, in turn, would drive innovative farmer-centric digital solutions and make reliable crop-related information available to all farmers on time. The AgriStack DPI consists of three foundational registries or databases associated with the agriculture sector, i.e., Geo-Referenced Village Maps, Crop Sown Registry and the Farmers Registry, all created and maintained by the State Governments/ Union Territories.

The Government has targeted to generate Farmer IDs of 11 crore Farmers in the country by 2026-27 and to conduct Digital Crop Survey in all the States/UTs from Kharif 2025. As of 28.03.2025, a total of 4,85,57,246 Farmer IDs have been generated. Further, Digital Crop Survey has been conducted in 436 Districts in Kharif 2024 and 461 Districts covering more than 23.90 crore plots have been surveyed in Rabi 2024-25.

Further, the Government is providing technical and financial support to all the States/ UTs for the timely implementation of the Mission:

1. Software for Farmer ID and Digital Crop Survey.
2. Providing training to the State officials.
3. Support for hiring human resources for creating a Project Monitoring Unit.
4. Providing Cloud Infrastructure for implementing the project.
5. The Department of Expenditure (DoE), Ministry of Finance, has announced a Scheme for Special Central Assistance (SCA) to States for Capital Investment 2024-25 with a total allocation of Rupees 5000 Crores. As of 28.03.2025, an amount of ₹ 1076 Crore has been released to six States of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh.
6. Further, the Government has advised the States to adopt a Camp-mode approach, under which financial assistance of Rs. 15,000 per camp has been provisioned to the States to encourage States to organize field-level camps and mobilise local administration.
7. To accelerate the creation and verification of Farmers’ Registry, Rs. 10/- per Farmer ID has been provisioned from the administrative fund of the PM KISAN Scheme. This amount will be utilized to provide honorarium to the field functionaries involved in the creation of the Farmers’ Registry.