The government plans to create digital ID and smart cards for real farmers to promptly reach them incentives and other services, officials said on Monday.
The project will be placed at the ECNEC meeting for approval on Tuesday, reports UNB.
The use of smart agriculture cards as a digital identity will ensure area and demand based agricultural services for each farmer and exchange of necessary farming information through digital analysis and management.
For this, digital profiles will cover 16.2 million farmers out of 50 million farmers. Among them 19 million farmers will be given smart agriculture cards. Agriculture Extension Department workers and agricultural experts will communicate with the 16.2 million farmers digitally, exchange information and conduct service activities according to the area based needs.
Such initiatives are taken under Smart Agriculture Card and Digital Agriculture Project.
The proposed total cost of the project is estimated at Tk 1.92 billion. The project will be implemented by September 2024.
A senior official in charge of agricultural economics and planning, project implementation and ICT wing of the Department of Agricultural Extension, told UNB various problems arise when banks disburse incentives to farmers.
Besides, many farmers have lost Tk 10 agricultural cards.
For these reasons, smart agriculture cards will be given to millions of farmers initially.
After that all the farmers of the country will come under the project in phases. Through this, crop field monitoring will be done digitally at field level, the official said.
He further said that all the information about how much land the farmer has, how much money he can get loan and eligibility of incentive will be justified instantly by installing the system.
"Our field level agriculture officer will collect this information and give input. Here you will find information on what crops farmers will grow this year and what crops they should grow next year. We also will include farmers in the digital platform," the official said.
Smart agriculture cards will be issued in nine districts of 14 agricultural regions based on geo-nature including the head office of the Department of Agricultural Extension.
The districts are Gopalganj, Sunamganj, Tangail, Barisal, Jessore, Dinajpur, Rajshahi, Bandarban and Mymensingh.