PNS|Hyderabad
A digital crop survey has been launched on a pilot basis in 12 states including Telangana from Kharif 2023 to generate a crop sown registry.
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said, “These initiatives aim to enable farmer-centric solutions through relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit and insurance, help for crop estimation, market intelligence etc.”
Responding to a question by Telangana MP BB Patil, he said that the architecture of the three core registries, that is, the farmer registry, geo-referencing of village map registry and crop sown registry has been finalised. He said that the existing scheme of the National e-Governance Project on Agriculture (NeGPA) has been used to build a Digital Public Infrastructure for Agriculture as an open source, open standard interoperable public facility as per the budget for 2023-24.
Responding to another question by Dr Ranjith Reddy, Minister Tomar said, “The Centre has been promoting organic farming in the country through a dedicated scheme named Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) since 2015-16. Under PKVY, farmers are provided financial assistance of Rs 50,000 per hectare for three years. Of this, Rs 31,000 is provided directly through DBT for inputs (bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides, organic manure, compost, vermicompost, botanical extracts etc).”
Around 34,500 farmers of Telangana are benefiting from the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) which encourages organic cultivation. About 13,800 hectares are under cultivation in 690 clusters. He also clarified that the farmer can get financial assistance of Rs 50,000 per hectare.
