Under the new farm plan from the current season, the Centre will cross check all digital land records before the procurement of paddy due in October
Among the many successes, the Digital India programme, which has carved out a new technology path for the country, is set to pave the way for future course correction that will change the future of the rural economy in India.
With the Centre already giving its go ahead to use drone technology for remote sensing and data collection in agricultural areas of 100 districts of the country, for Gram Panchayat level yield estimation, under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and integrating these digital land records, that will be updated prior to each procurement season, with the Centre’s nodal procurement agency Food Corporation of India (FCI), now the Centre plans to make a direct outreach to the farmers for farm procurement.
According to Union agriculture secretary Sanjay Agrawal, the Centre plans to put in place a new technology backed system for farm procurement in place to weed out the middlemen in agriculture and plug massive subsidy leaks.
“The intention of the government is to ensure that genuine farmers get the benefit of MSP procurement, which has increased significantly in the last five years,” Agarwal said.
Meanwhile, the new procurement plan which is likely to be put in place from October, might further dent the government’s negotiations with the protesting farmers, mostly from Punjab, as most of the states including Punjab have completed the digitisation process and Centre has cleared its intentions to adapt the new digital land data system for procurement.
“Every state wants the farmers to get the benefits from the procurement process and not the traders. He said that this arrangement would ensure that the MSP reaches the farmers and not the traders,” Agarwal said.
Under the new procurement plan from the current season, the Centre will cross check all digital land records before the procurement of paddy due in October. The move is to ensure the Centre’s Minimum Support Price (MSP) dole reaches to the farmers and not traders, Union food secretary Sudhanshu Pandey announced last week.
As per government data, the marketing year 2020-21 (October-September) saw a record 879.01 lakh tonnes of paddy procurement at an MSP price of Rs 1,65,956.90 crore, while in the marketing year 2020-21 (April-March), saw a record 389.93 lakh tonnes of wheat was purchased at Rs 75,060 crore.
The Centre believes that the new system will benefit farmers and will check illegal procurement of crops at low prices by local traders who later sell the crop to the FCI on higher government supported MSPs, earning huge profits. The subsidy meant for the farmers thus goes to traders.
The new system backed by the digital data will help the government to ascertain the real beneficiaries, the farmers, and make the procurement process swift. The Centre has already clarified that all farmer produce, whether in their own land or in rented land, will be procured with full MSP by the government.
“It is not necessary for the farmers to be the owner of the land or not. If farmers have cultivated any land, then it will be bought,” Pandey said.
At present most of the procuring states, barring Assam and Uttarakhand as well as Jammu and Kashmir have integrated digital land records with the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
“The whole idea is to cross check how much crop has been cultivated in what area and accordingly procure it. This is where digital land records integrated centrally with FCI will help during the procurement process,” Pandey said.
Meanwhile, the Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) has lauded the steps taken by the Union ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare to promote digital technology in the farm sector and has asked the government to take steps for smooth implementation and execution of the digital agriculture mission.
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. The unique ID for each farmer is part of the Centre’s initiative to create a database by collating data from various schemes, such as PM-Kisan, and linking them with land records.
The Centre is preparing 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,” a government statement said.
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