Agriculture data collection: A big challenge for Indian Agriculture

Data collection is a base of planning and analysis. Indian agriculture is very much diversified in many means like size of land, availability of water, type of crop, season, climatic condition, market value, market demand and many more. There is no hesitation to say that there is no reliable source of agriculture data in India, Most of data are collected by govt employees. There is shortage of govt employees, it is always questionable about method and authenticity of data collected by them. We don’t have any sufficient information about the crop cultivation area, production of agriculture produces, consumption of agriculture produces and available stock. 

Policy makers can’t make effective policies as there is no reliable data collection mechanism. There are various points of data collection all these points can be assembled on single platform and data can be extracted as per demand. First point is farmers. Farmers can feed the detail of his land and area of different crop taken on his land. Farmers are primary source of authentic data. Govt must create awareness among farmers for data collection by the farmers. These data can be matched with the agriculture input sellers, that particular input seller has sold the farming input to that particular farmers. After that farmers sell the farm produce to the agriculture market. That agriculture market can be cross check the details if farmers have taken crop on sufficient land as per production with sufficient farm inputs. After that buyer can cross check if there is sufficient production of particular commodity in the specific region. Block-chain technology can be helpful here in real time data collection. 

Once the data is collected then it can used by all the stockholders as per their need. Farmer can use it to know the demand of hind production, availability of stock in market and decision making for crop cultivation planning. Traders can use it know that how much quantity they will have to buy from farmers, If the quantity is more that then have they sufficient storage to store new arrival, have they sufficient money to make payment to farmers. Processor can make decision about planning of processing. if the product will available is sufficient quantity for processing. From where processor will but the stock. Govt can make decision if there is any requirement to ban the export import to control the prices from falling or inflation. 

Data collection is very crucial step. There must be easy availability of the reliable and real data. Poor data creates a lot of problem for agriculture. After spending the money by the govt, basic agriculture problems remain as it is. At some places farmers don’t get the price of their produce and at some places there is problem of inflation.