(a) whether the Government has recently signed an MoU with Private company for setting up and launching the National Agriculture Geo Hub;
(b) If so, the details thereof;
(c) the major aims, objectives and benefits in setting up a National Agriculture Geo Hub; and
(d) the financial costs involved for the Government in establishing the Geo Hub and the details thereof?
MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE
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(a) to (d) : The Department has commenced the work for creating Agristack in the country. In order to create Agristack, the department is in the process of finalising “India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)” which will lay down a framework for Agristack. Accordingly, a Task Force has been constituted and in furtherance, a Concept Paper on IDEA has already been floated for comments from the general public not only through department’s website but also through emails especially to subject matter specialists, Agro-Industry, Farmers, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).The IDEA would help in laying down the architecture for the Agri-stack in the country and that would serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging emerging technologies to contribute effectively in creating a better Ecosystem for Agriculture in India. This Ecosystem shall help the Government in effective planning towards increasing the income of farmers in particular and improving the efficiency of the Agriculture sector as a whole. As a first step in this direction Government has already initiated building federated farmers’ database that would serve as the core of the envisaged Agristack.
No private sector companies are involved as far as building of the Agristack is concerned. However, leading Technology/Agri-tech/StartUp companies were identified and invited to collaborate with the Government of India to develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on small portions of data from the federated Farmers’ database for certain identified areas (Districts/Village). A public call through the Department’s website has been placed inviting proposals for PoCs. MoUs purely on pro bono basis with selected companies are being signed, for a period of one year to develop PoCs. 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 National level.
Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has signed an MoU with Esri India Technologies Private Limited for working on a Proof of Concept (PoC) in select Districts/Villages to develop a model for an Agriculture Geo-Hub with an objective to establish a framework to collect and integrate available geo-spatial information with other associated information, perform spatial analytics, share results & data and deploy dynamic Apps which would support estimates for policy planning, monitoring requirements and ease in decision making.
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