SHIMLA: Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur has thanked Central Government for approving Rs. 108 crore for the project proposal for Integrated Digital Agriculture Platform submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Government of India by State Agriculture Department.

Chief Minister said the project proposal tilted "Transformation in Agriculture Using Emerging Technologies" would develop in-house competency in providing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based services to farmers, thereby reducing administrative processes and increasing efficiencies and ensure the on-demand delivery of agriculture services to the farmers with the aim to improve quality of agriculture produce.

Jai Ram Thakur said that the project aims to create a single sign-on platform for various schemes of the department (State and Centrally sponsored) which would standardize and simplify procedures for applying to various schemes (Cash and in-kind) of the department and transfer the benefit directly into the accounts of the beneficiaries while cutting down the delay in the disbursement process.

He said that a Market Information System would also be created to provide visibility on the projection of demand and supply, price realization of the produce and access to national e-market platform. Centralized directory for input suppliers and status availability of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, equipment or implements and machinery with their GIS locations would also be part of the proposed project.

Jai Ram Thakur said the proposed project also endeavours to create an integrated farmer database, Application Programming Interface (API) Integration, Traceability Platform, Automated Farm Extension Serveries, customized dashboards, data analytics & centralized reports and farmer field school application.

He said that this proposed project would use IT enabled ecosystem which would benefit the farmers, department and other stakeholders.