In a move to develop a database of farmers, the agriculture ministry has started work to build a digital registry in which more than 90 millions farmers will be provided with a unique ID which would be linked to the land records, Aadhar. Sources told FE that the move to create farmers’ digital registry is part of the government’s digital agriculture mission, which would enable farmers to access benefits from a host of schemes.

The Budget 2024-25 may announce the roll-out of the facility.

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The unique IDs would contain the details of the farmers’ land holding, crops grown in the field and other details, so that it would be easier for the government to provide direct cash benefits, sanction credits, crop insurance and projecting crop yield in advance.

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“Sanctioning credit and crop insurance using unique Ids of the farmers would be faster,” an agriculture ministry official told FE, adding that most of the states have digitized the land records. At present, under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM kisan), API based software checks the land records of the farmers who claim benefits.

An official said that there are several pilots is being undertaken in several districts including Farrukhabad (Uttar Pradesh), Beed (Maharashtra), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab), and Virudhunagar (Tamil Nadu) for piloting of digital sanction of credit under the kisan credit card (KCCs).

The agriculture ministry’s initiative to develop a digital database of farmers is based on Karnataka’s Fruits Farmer Registration & Unified Beneficiary Information System (FRUITS) software which facilitates single registration using an Aadhar card and state’s Bhoomi digitised land record system for authenticating ownership.

In Karnataka, through FRUITS software, farmers can access benefits of schemes such as cash incentives under PM Kisan, payment for Minimum Support Price For crops, special financial assistance, caste certificate authentication and ration cards.

According to estimates, there are 140 million farmers in the country and out of these around 35% – 40% do not own lands and engaged in tenancy farming.

The digital Ids of farmers will be mandatory once a registry is created over the next couple of years for receiving direct cash benefits such as under PM Kisan.

Currently the government uses several methods such as Aadhar based self registration which are subject to exclusion criteria for identifying beneficiaries under direct cash benefit transfer such as PM Kisan – where currently 9.6 million farmers are provided Rs 6000 annually through three equal installments.

The direct cash under PM Kisan is directly into the Aadhaar seeded bank accounts of the farmers under the scheme. The state and union territories identify the farmer families which are eligible for support as per scheme guideline.

For FY25, a budget provision of Rs 60,000 crore has been made for PM-kisan which is the same as last fiscal.

Currently, financial assistance under PM Kisan is provided to farmers with land holdings which are subject to certain exclusion criteria such as institutional land holders and farmers who hold constitutional and other government positions. The direct cash transfer under the scheme allows farmers to take care of expenses related to agriculture and well as other incidental expenses.