The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare has recently signed 4 more MoUs regarding the Agristack with Patanjali Organic Research Institute, ESRI India Technologies, Amazon Web Services, and Star Agribazaar. Here, we analyse these MoUs, and explain what they mean for Indian agriculture.
In response to an RTI query by us, the Ministry of Agriculture provided us with a MoU between the Department of Agriculture and Microsoft, and a document titled “Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for verifying Farmer’s Database (100 Villages)”.
The government recently announced that Microsoft would be conducting a pilot for the Agristack. Along with several other organisations, we wrote to the Union Minister for Agriculture, asking for further consultations, highlighting the need for statutory backing, and demanding greater transparency.
IFF has a published an explainer on the 'AgriStack' proposed by the Centre. Through the explainer we hope to provide an introduction to the 'Agristack' and it's potential benefits and drawbacks, with a larger aim of starting a public conversation about this issue.