New Delhi: Union Ministry of Agriculture and Microsoft India yesterday inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a pilot project in 100 villages of 6 states, the Ministry informed here today.
Microsoft will start the pilot project in selected 100 villages in 10 districts of 6 states (Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh) to develop farmer interface for smart and well-organized agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.
For this project, Microsoft has joined in with its local partner, CropData. In this regard, a MoU and tripartite agreement was exchanged in the presence of Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar. 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 Ministry stated.
The Ministry further informed that since 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. Union Agriculture Minister Tomar has also issued directives for Geo tagging of all the assets that will be created by the virtue of all schemes of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Union Ministers of State for Agriculture Parshottam Rupala and Kailash Chaudhary, Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal, Additional Secretary Vivek Agrawal, President of Microsoft India Anant Maheshwari, Executive Director Navtej Bal, Director (Strategic Sales) Nandini Singh, Managing Director of CropData Technology Pvt. Ltd. Sachin Suri, Director Ramakant Jha and other officials attended the function.
– global bihari bureau
