New Delhi: Dr. Pramod Kumar Meherda, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, delivered a comprehensive presentation showcasing Agri Stack as a revolutionary digital public infrastructure for Indian Agriculture.
Dr.Mehrda was speaking in a technical session organized by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to commemorate the 20th Statistics Day on 29th June 2026 at Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi.
He explained that Agri Stack serves as a farmer-centric framework designed to move agricultural governance away from traditional paper-based methods toward an active, interconnected data ecosystem. At the heart of this initiative are three foundational registries built on a federated architecture, specifically a verified Farmers Registry, a Geo-referenced Village Map Registry, and a Crop Sown Registry, which collectively answer who the farmer is, where their land is situated, and what specific crop is being grown on it.
Dr. Meherda emphasized that this system functions similarly to Aadhaar for the farming community, assigning a unique digital identity known as a Farmer ID or Kisan Pehchan Patra to build a reliable national database. A key target highlighted under this framework includes generating eleven crore Farmer IDs by the financial year 2026-27, alongside scaling up the Digital Crop Survey across all states and union territories. To expedite this rollout, he outlined strategic field-level mobilization plans, including central funding support of fifteen thousand rupees per camp given to states based on the percentage of Farmer IDs generated within village clusters, driving an efficient, collaborative center-state execution.
In terms of real-world delivery, Dr. Meherda illustrated how integrating Agri Stack with flagship central schemes like PM-KISAN, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, and Kisan Credit Cards significantly minimizes paperwork and speeds up processing times. By pulling verified land and crop details directly from the registry, financial institutions can automate risk-scoring and underwriting, potentially reducing loan approval times from multiple weeks down to under thirty minutes.
He also detailed how the infrastructure leverages security-by-design and privacy-by-design principles, utilising consent managers and Digitally Verifiable Credentials through DigiLocker so farmers retain secure ownership of their data. Furthermore, Dr. Meherda discussed how combining Agri Stack with advanced technologies, such as remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and unified multilingual chatbots, resolves long-standing field challenges such as crop survey errors and outdated land records, establishing a robust foundation for modern digital agriculture services.