What’s in the news?

• Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar has announced that the Centre has created a National Farmers’ Database with records of 5.5 crore farmers by taking data from existing national schemes such as PM-KISAN, soil health cards and the insurance scheme PM Fasal Bima Yojna. 
• The Minister urged States to create their own databases using the national database’s federated structure and also allow linkages to the land records maintained by the States. 
• He added that the Centre is hoping to increase the coverage to 8 crore farmers by December by linking it to State land record databases.
• Earlier, Mr. Tomar had told the Lok Sabha that the database could be used for targeted service delivery with higher efficiency and in a focussed & time bound manner.
• Already, companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Patanjali have been asked to develop technology solutions for farmers using data from the database. 

Reference: