Unique IDs to help state farmers avail benefits from govt

Lucknow: The UP govt is set to initiate the mega statewide campaign to enrol millions of farmers under the ambitious ‘farmers registry’ programme.
Under it, a unique ID would be given to farmers that could be used to avail multiple key facilities and benefits, including farm loans, insurance, agricultural credit facilities and even availing funds under the ambitious PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana.
Scheduled to be launched from July 1, the campaign will see farmers being provided with a ‘farmers’ registry’, a federated registry of all farmers in the country, compiled by state according to common standards and cached by the Centre.
Part of ‘Agri-Stack’ scheme, the farmer registry – which will be dynamically linked to the farmland plot records – will form the foundation for quick, efficient and transparent service by Centre and the state govt, according to a concept note of the department of agriculture.
The development could potentially bring the spotlight back on govt attempts to put farmer welfare at the centrestage while ramping up crop productivity and agricultural growth.
The state govt carried out the campaign on a pilot basis in Farrukhabad in which 1,85,634 farmers were provided a farmer registry.
The campaign attains much significance against the backdrop of Centre’s decision of making farmer registry mandatory for availing benefits under Prime Minister Kisan Samman scheme from December later year.
Accordingly, the state agriculture department has decided to get all farmers’ registry done before September 30.
The registry would contain the farmer's name, his father’s name, land records of the agricultural plot, mobile number and Aadhar number along with the e-KYC details.
At the same time, the initiative would help the farmers get registered online for availing minimum support price (MSP), advice from the experts and other institutions for initiating new programmes.
The farmer registries will be prepared with the help of a mobile application by a team of officials from various departments including revenue, agriculture, panchayati raj, cane development and horticulture. The state govt also plans to deploy BC Sakhis from the rural development department to ensure a more exhaustive coverage. The team will be overseen by 12 master trainers -- six each from the revenue and agriculture department – at the state level. Likewise, two master trainers will be appointed at the district level and one at the tehsil level.
The overall exercise would be supervised by a 15-member coordination committee headed by the chief secretary. The other members of the committee will include agriculture production commissioner and senior officials from the revenue, planning, horticulture, cane and agriculture. Additional chief secretary (agriculture) will be the member-secretary of the committee. Significantly, the state govt also plans to expedite the process of constituting maps with the help of remote sensing. Accordingly, each farmland is being geo-referenced and land revenue records are documented. Likewise, the Kharif, Rabi and Zaid crops are also surveyed on a real time basis.