Question : MoU for Post-harvest Mechanism

(a) whether the Government is aware that it has recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a private/multi-national corporation to provide post-harvest management solutions to farmers, initially in 100 villages in 10 districts across several States and if so, the details thereof;
(b) whether this MoU would provide the company, access to a master database containing the personal information, including land records of more than 50 million farmers;
(c) whether the Government is taking specific data-protection measures to safeguard the privacy of the farmers involved in the scheme;
(d) if so, the details thereof, if not, the reasons therefor;
(e) whether the Government is taking specific steps to ensure that this programme will prioritize the interests of the farmers involved rather than those of a multinational corporation; and
(f) if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor?

MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE
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(a) to (f): The Department has constituted a high level Task Force, which is in the process of finalizing “India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)” report. Based on this, the Department is in the process of finalizing a framework for creating Agristack in the country, which will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging digital technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve efficiency of the Agriculture sector in the country.

Leading Technology/Agri-tech/Start-Ups companies were identified and invited to collaborate with the Government of India and develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on data of select Districts / Villages. A public call through the Department’s website was issued inviting proposals for Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Companies were invited to sign MoU on purely pro bono basis and develop the PoCs. These PoCs will help in understanding the uses of Agristack and service & 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. In this regard, the Government has signed MoU with leading Technology/Agri-tech Players & Start-ups for working on Proof of Concepts (PoCs) in the select Districts/Villages.


Accordingly, Government has signed an MOU with Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd. for consolidating agri ecosystem across the value chain (farm to fork) to empower the farmer using data Analytics. In this regard, 100 villages in 10 districts across several states have been selected and a pilot is being carried out by Microsoft and their local partner. The details of the selected states/District/Villages for the said PoC are given at Annexure.

Access to federated Farmers’ database will be with Government only. No private company is involved in developing the federated Farmers’ database.

As of now, the federated database is being built by taking the publicly available data as existing in the Department and in various data silos in Government.