Team News Riveting
New Delhi, April 14
Microsoft has come forward to start a pilot project in selected 100 villages in 10 districts of 6 states to develop farmer interface for smart and well-organized agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.
The six states include Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The Ministry of Agriculture and Microsoft India had inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project. Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Food Processing Industries Narendra Singh Tomar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of digital agriculture was now taking shape.
After taking over as Prime Minister in 2014, Modi has laid great emphasis on the use of modern technologies in the farming sector, so that farmers can get benefitted and enhance their income through it. With the use of technology farming will be a profitable venture for the farmers and the new generation will also get attracted towards agriculture.
For this project, Microsoft has joined in with its local partner, CropData. The project is for one year and both sides inking the MoU will bear the cost on their own. This project will carry out various tasks for the betterment of farmers in the selected 100 villages, which will enhance their income. This project will reduce the input costs for farmers and make farming easy. It is proposed to undertake similar pilot projects with other public and private players to create a vibrant digital agro-ecosystem in the country.
The government aims to increase the income of farmers by removing the bottleneck of inconsistent information. A number of new initiatives have been launched to achieve this goal. A major initiative, in this regard, is the creation of Agri-Funds based on the National Farmers Database. The government is preparing a farmer database by linking the land records of farmers across the country. The data related to PM Kisan, Soil Health Card and Pradhan Mantri Crop Insurance Scheme, available with the government, have been integrated and the process of inclusion of other data is going on.
