The government has started generating 12-digit unique IDs for farmers to avail all farm-related services under various schemes "seamlessly".
A senior official of the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare made the announcement.
Additional Secretary, Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Vivek Aggarwal said media reporters that a unique ID for each farmer is part of the Government's initiative to create a database by collating data from various schemes, such as PM-Kisan, and linking them with land records.
Aggarwal, who heads the Ministry's Digital Agriculture Division further said, "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."
"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 added.
"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 further added.
Besides, linkage of land parcels through a Geographical Information System (GIS), where maps are digitised by states, will be used. Agarwal also believes that GIS data of land parcels will help farmers in getting precise advisories.
Earlier this month, the plan to issue such an ID to farmers, and the creation of a database, was discussed during the Chief Ministers' Conference.
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, stated a report from The Indian Express.
