Budget 2024: Centre takes big leap in digitising farmer details

The Centre's plans to facilitate the implementation of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in agriculture, announced in the budget, will help the government in implementing various schemes for the benefit of farmers, said industry executives and experts. Rural land related actions will include assignment of unique land parcel identification number or Bhu-Aadhaar for all lands, digitisation of cadastral maps, survey of map sub-divisions as per current ownership, establishment of land registry and linking to the farmers registry.

DPI will help the government organise and scrutinise the data of farmers regarding their land, crops grown and weather forecast, said the people. "The technology, besides digitising land records, will help to provide better estimates of crop production and ensure timely action," said RG Agarwal, chairman, Dhanuka Group, an agrochemical manufacturing firm. Pushan Sharma, director-research, CRISIL Market Intelligence & Analytics, said the proposed steps will promote better credit risk assessment and enhance formal credit penetration for farmers, which currently stands at around 60%. The implementation of DPI, planned in the next three years with the help of states, will help collect details of 60 million farmers and their lands in the farmer and land registries.