No pvt firm in building Agristack; govt to bring data policy for agri sector: Tomar


PTI | New Delhi | Updated: 23-07-2021 19:32 IST | Created: 23-07-2021 19:31 IST
No pvt firm in building Agristack; govt to bring data policy for agri sector: Tomar
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Allaying concerns over farmers' privacy data under a new initiative 'Agristack', Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday informed Parliament that the government has not involved any private company in developing the digital ecosystem on agriculture.

Tomar also said his ministry in consultation with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process of bringing out a data policy for the agriculture sector.

Agristack is a digital ecosystem for covering everything related to agriculture, including farmers' databases, land records, soil types, and crops.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Tomar said his ministry has commenced the work for creating 'Agristack' in the country and is in the process of finalising the 'India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)', which will lay down a framework for Agristack.

''No private sector companies are involved in building the Agristack,'' he said.

However, leading technology, agri-tech and start-up companies were identified and invited to collaborate with the government and develop proof of concepts (PoC) based on the federated farmers' database, he said.

A public call through the government's website was also issued inviting proposals for memorandum of understanding (MoU).

''Companies were invited to sign MoU on a purely pro bono basis for a period of one year and develop PoCs,'' he said.

The PoCs will help in understanding solutions that can be built using available data, and some of them, if found beneficial to the farmers, will be scaled up at a national level, he added.

Tomar further said there is no connection between the MoU and the IDEA consultation paper, for which comments were sought from various stakeholders in the country.

When asked if his ministry has planned any steps to protect the data related to farmers, Tomar said that as of now, the federated farmers' database is being built by taking the publicly available data that is existing in various data silos in the government and linking them with the digitised land records.

''However, no private data of the farmers is shared with any private organisation,'' he said.

Tomar said his ministry in consultation with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process of bringing out a data policy for the agriculture sector.

Once the Agristack is developed and implemented, Tomar said the services will be available for all the farmers across the country.

''Once finalised, this can serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve farm efficiency/efficiency of the agriculture sector in the country with an overall goal of doubling farmers' income,'' he added.

Asked if the government or private companies will own the digital infrastructure under this initiative, Tomar in a separate reply said the central government owns the digital infrastructure of IDEA.

''Once modalities are developed in consultation with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), it will be shared with other public and private sector players, including the state government,'' he added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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