A plan by India to create a digital database to increase farmers’ income has raised concerns about privacy and exclusion of poor farmers and farmers without land. tech firm Microsoft Agriculture Ministry’s AgriStack will run a pilot in 100 villages across six Indian states to develop a “Farmer Interface for Smart and Streamlined Agriculture” with the aim of improving efficiency and reducing waste. Each farmer will have a unique digital identity that includes personal details, information about the land they cultivate, as well as production and financial details. The digital national ID of each ID person will be linked to Aadhaar.
Amid a massive push in India to digitize data from land titles to medical records, officials have called “AgriStack” an integrated platform for farmers to provide end-to-end services across the agri food value chain. Will prepare But the project is being done without consultation with farmers, and there is no legal framework to protect their personal data, according to more than 50 farmer groups and digital rights organizations that have criticized the proposal.
“These developments … are taking place in a policy vacuum regarding data privacy of farmers,” he said in a statement. “Such an approach may fail to address structural issues and instead lead to new problems.” A spokesman for the agriculture ministry did not respond to a request for comment. About two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion population depends on agriculture for a living, but most are small and marginal farmers with limited access to advanced technologies or formal credit that can help improve production and fetch better prices. can.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has vowed to double farmers’ income by 2022-23, last September passed three new laws that seek to regulate and modernize agriculture. Farmer groups have opposed the laws, saying they would only benefit large private buyers at their own expense.
According to a study by consulting firm Accenture, digital farming technologies and services, including sensors to monitor cattle, drones to analyze soil and apply pesticides, can improve yields and significantly increase farmers’ income.
But such technologies also generate vast amounts of data that can be used without farmers’ consent, said Rohin Garg, associate policy advisor at the non-profit Internet Freedom Foundation. “In the absence of data protection regulation, farmers’ data can be exploited by private sector entities” and lead to higher interest rates on farm loans and forced evictions, he said. Digitization can also exclude rural communities, Dalits and indigenous people who are often prevented from owning land.
“These farmers and farmers are still not part of the data system and are not recognized as farmers,” said the non-profit Coalition for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture. “Ultimately, any proposal that seeks to tackle the issues affecting Indian agriculture must address the root causes of these issues – something that AgriStack’s current implementation fails to do.”
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