For easy access to schemes, Govt plans 12-digit unique ID for farmers, database

“The intent is to create a unified farmer service interface. The unique ID will enable them to seamlessly avail various Government schemes and credit facilities, and help the Centre and state governments in better planning of procurement operations,” Aggarwal, who heads the Ministry’s Digital Agriculture Division, said.

“We have started internally generating unique farmer IDs and once we are ready with the database of 8 crore farmers, we will launch this,” the official said.

“So far, the database has been prepared for 11 states, including Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

The remaining states, including Telangana, Kerala and Punjab, will be covered in the coming months,” he said.

For this, Aggarwal said, a database is being created from existing schemes such as PM-Kisan, Soil Health Card and PM Fasal Bima Yojana. “All farmer data in Central schemes will be linked to land record details available with state governments. Aadhaar will be used as a deduplication mechanism,” he said.

Besides, linkage of land parcels through a Geographical Information System (GIS), where maps are digitised by states, will be used. According to Aggarwal, GIS data of land parcels will help farmers in getting precise advisories.

The plan to issue such an ID to farmers, and the creation of a database, was discussed during the Chief Ministers’ Conference earlier this month. On September 6, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had said that his Ministry has created a database of 5.5 crore farmers and it will be increased to 8 crore by this December.

Recently, as part of its digital mission, the Agriculture Ministry signed MoUs with 10 private companies, including CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms, ITC and NCDEX e-Markets Ltd (NeML), and Microsoft, Star Agribazaar, Esri India Technologies, Patanjali and Amazon.