Though belated, the government initiative to enable the country's farmers to enjoy the benefits of digitisation extensively deserves plaudits. It has been learnt that the ICT wing of the Department of Agriculture Extension has detected that various problems arise when banks disburse incentives among the eligible farmers. Given this constraint, the government is set to start a project to introduce 'smart agriculture' cards for farmers. They will serve as farmers' digital identity or their individual digital profiles. The said smart cards will ensure area- and demand-based agricultural services for each farmer. By digitally checking on farmers' personal details vis-à-vis those related to their agro-based needs, people at the department concerned could form a detailed idea about what the former needed urgently.
Using the digital smart cards, farmers would also be able to exchange necessary information about agricultural methods and right or wrong cropping patterns. Thus digital analysis is set to emerge as the fulcrum of the whole process. Earlier, farmers were provided with agricultural cards that would cost Tk 10. Those were traditional ID cards, with no facility for information storage. Since many farmers have lost these cards, the fresh initiative will cover them as well. Though it may sound ambitious, the government is prepared to bring all the farmers of the country under the project of digitisation in phases.
Agriculturists believe that after the start of the project, monitoring of croplands will go digital in the real sense. Under the present traditional system, farmers have to depend on their manual estimates while preparing information sought by local agricultural offices. Shortcomings of delays, and thus time-killing, errors and oblivion hinder the process. The digitisation programme is set to do away with these impediments. Clear hints are there that after the full implementation of farming digitisation, field-level agriculture officers will collect the necessary information about farmers, to add them later to their individual profiles. The most important of all, there will be unambiguous clues to what crops farmers grow in a particular time of the year, and what crops they plan for the following seasons. All this is believed to offer a clear picture of Bangladesh agriculture and its farmers.
Smart agriculture cards can also keep field-level agricultural officials informed about the farmers' status as an individual. At the initial stage, the digital profiles will cover 16.2 million farmers out of 50 million. Smart agriculture cards will be first issued in nine districts in 14 agricultural regions. The cards will be based on a district's geo-nature. As part of the project's routine work, the Agriculture Extension Department's staff members will communicate with the 16.2 million farmers digitally. The whole corpus of these initiatives is set to be undertaken by the Smart Agriculture Card and Digital Agriculture Project. The total cost of the project is estimated at Tk 1.07 billion. Its implementation target is fixed at September, 2024 at the latest. Bangladesh has for sometime entered the digital age. Sadly, the agricultural sector, with which the nation is identified globally for ages, remains deprived of the digitisation benefits. There is no doubt a full digitisation will radically transform its agriculture. Smart cards for farmers complemented by digital supervision of agricultural activities will bring about desirable changes. They will expedite the country's graduation to modern-era farming. Last but not least, there is the oft-repeated caution: all concerned should be watchful of digital gadgets' tampering.
