When was the Digital Agriculture Mission approved and how big is it?

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, approved the Digital Agriculture Mission on 2 September 2024 with a total outlay of around ₹2,817 crore (of which the Central share is around ₹1,940 crore), as announced by the Press Information Bureau on the same day. The mission consolidates the AgriStack, Krishi Decision Support System and Soil Profile Map workstreams that the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare had been piloting since 2021–22.

What is AgriStack, in one paragraph?

AgriStack is the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare's federated digital public infrastructure for agriculture. It has three foundational registers: a Farmers Registry (one unique Farmer ID per farmer, linked to land records and — with consent — Aadhaar), a Crop Sown Registry (season-by-season, plot-level record of the crop sown on each parcel, captured via the Digital Crop Survey) and Geo-referenced village maps that align cadastral maps with satellite imagery. States are the data fiduciaries and operators; the Centre supplies the technology stack, standards and APIs.

Who owns the data — Centre, states or farmers?

States own and operate the farmer and crop registers; the Centre owns the standards, stack and federated APIs. Farmers' personally identifiable data is shared with downstream systems only on the basis of explicit consent, consistent with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — meaning a bank, insurer or advisory startup cannot read a farmer's AgriStack record without that farmer's authenticated consent.

How does this connect with the Soil Health Card and PMFBY?

The 1:10,000 soil profile maps under DAM provide the base layer; the Soil Health Card scheme provides the plot-level chemical-property readings that sit on top. Together they enable plot-level fertiliser advisories. For Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, the Crop Sown Registry verifies what was actually sown on the insured plot, while Krishi DSS layers (satellite-based crop condition, yield-cutting from DGCES) feed the YES-TECH / Digi-Claim yield-settlement workflow.

What is Krishi DSS and how is it different from older portals?

Krishi DSS (krishi-dss.gov.in) is a geospatial decision-support platform launched by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare in August 2024. Unlike older single-purpose portals (for example, the FASAL crop-forecast project at MNCFC or stand-alone soil portals), Krishi DSS is designed as an integrated layer that brings together AgriStack registers, ISRO–NRSC satellite products, IMD weather data, soil maps and MNCFC yield forecasts in a single API and visualisation stack — usable by Centre, states, researchers and (via authorised access) the private sector.

What should agritech founders and FPOs do about AgriStack today?

Three practical steps. First, follow the state-by-state Farmers Registry rollout — your product's onboarding flow should accept the Farmer ID as a primary key. Second, design data flows for consent: AgriStack reads are mediated by farmer consent and authorised data-fiduciary roles, not bulk scraping. Third, watch the published AgriStack API and standards documentation from the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare — Farmers Registry, Crop Sown Registry and Geo-referenced village map APIs are the foundational layers most third-party services will need.

Digital Agriculture Mission (DAM) — AgriStack, Krishi DSS and Digital Crop Survey explained

On 2 September 2024 the Union Cabinet approved the Digital Agriculture Mission (DAM) with a total outlay of around ₹2,817 crore(Central share around ₹1,940 crore). The mission is an umbrella for three workstreams the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare had been piloting since 2021–22: the AgriStack (Farmers Registry, Crop Sown Registry and Geo-referenced village maps), the Krishi Decision Support System (Krishi DSS) and the Soil Profile Map at 1:10,000 scale. The Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES) is being scaled in parallel. Together they form the digital public infrastructure on which schemes like PM-Kisan, Kisan Credit Card, PMFBY crop insurance and Soil Health Card advisories are being rebuilt for the next decade.

Why a Digital Agriculture Mission, and why now

India runs the world's largest set of agriculture welfare and support schemes. PM-Kisan alone disburses around ₹6,000 per year to more than 9 crore farmer households; PMFBY insures crops on over 5 crore hectares each year; the Kisan Credit Card system extends short-term credit to a comparable number of farmers. Until recently, each of these schemes ran on its own beneficiary list, its own crop declaration and its own land-record extracts — often paper-based, often duplicated, and rarely tied to the same plot geometry. This produced duplicate beneficiaries, mismatched sowing declarations, slow claim settlements and limited room for plot-level advisories or insurance pricing.

The Digital Agriculture Mission's design response is a federated set of registers and APIs — modelled on the broader India Stack pattern of digital public infrastructure — that lets schemes, banks, insurers, researchers and authorised private players read a consistent farmer-and-plot record, with farmer consent. The 2 September 2024 Cabinet decision committed Central funds and locked in a delivery schedule across states.

The pillars of DAM

AgriStack — Farmers Registry

What it is: A nationwide registry that assigns each farmer a unique Farmer ID, linked to land records of the state revenue department and (where the farmer consents) to Aadhaar for authentication.

Who builds it: Built by state governments using a Centre-supplied stack and onboarded into a federated national database. The Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare is the system owner; states are the data fiduciaries for their farmers.

Status: Memoranda of Understanding signed by most major agricultural states from 2023–24; pilots completed in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and others. The mission target is to enrol around 11 crore (110 million) farmers, with around 6 crore in 2024–25, 3 crore in 2025–26 and 2 crore in 2026–27.

AgriStack — Crop Sown Registry (Digital Crop Survey)

What it is: A season-by-season, plot-level record of what crop is sown on each survey-numbered parcel. Replaces the older girdawari / patwari paper crop-cutting registers with a mobile-based digital survey.

Who builds it: State agriculture and revenue departments conduct the survey each Kharif and Rabi using a Centre-provided mobile app, geo-tagging each plot and uploading photographs. The Crop Sown Registry feeds insurance, MSP procurement, soil and advisory systems.

Status: Digital Crop Survey rolled out as a national exercise from Kharif 2024 after pilots in 11 states (2023–24); aimed at full national coverage by Kharif/Rabi 2025–26.

AgriStack — Geo-referenced village maps

What it is: Vector geo-referenced village maps that align cadastral (revenue) maps with satellite imagery, so every plot in the Crop Sown Registry has a verifiable geometry.

Who builds it: Survey of India and state revenue departments produce the geo-referenced cadastres; the maps are exposed to authorised systems through the AgriStack APIs.

Status: Coverage growing in step with state Digital Crop Survey rollouts; full coverage targeted alongside the Crop Sown Registry build.

Krishi Decision Support System (Krishi DSS)

What it is: A geospatial system that fuses satellite-based crop, weather, soil and water datasets with AgriStack data to support advisories, drought and yield forecasts, and policy decisions at district, block and plot level. See our full Krishi-DSS deep-dive at /krishi-dss.

Who builds it: Built by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare in partnership with ISRO–National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), India Meteorological Department (IMD), Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), ICAR, IIT Bombay and BISAG-N.

Status: Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 29 August 2024 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, as krishi-dss.gov.in, ahead of the formal mission approval. Expansion of data layers and downstream applications is a core DAM workstream.

Soil Profile Map (1:10,000)

What it is: Detailed digital soil profile maps at 1:10,000 scale for around 142 million hectares of agricultural land, with around 29 million hectares already mapped at the time of DAM approval.

Who builds it: ICAR-National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP), Nagpur and state agriculture / soil-testing departments produce the maps, with field samples processed by Soil Testing Laboratories.

Status: Active workstream; outputs feed the Soil Health Card scheme and Krishi DSS.

Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES)

What it is: A modernised, technology-enabled General Crop Estimation Survey (GCES) using yield-cutting data captured on mobile apps with geo-tagging and photographs, replacing the paper-based GCES used to produce national yield estimates.

Who builds it: State agricultural statistics units conduct the field yield-cutting experiments and upload data using a Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare app; the central system aggregates and publishes the estimates.

Status: Pilots from 2023–24; nationwide scale-up alongside the Crop Sown Registry rollout.

What this changes on the ground

Targeted scheme delivery (PM-Kisan, KCC, PMFBY, MSP procurement). A single, verified Farmer ID lets the Department deliver PM-Kisan instalments, sanction Kisan Credit Card limits and settle Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana claims against the same source-of-truth land and crop record — cutting out duplicate registrations, ghost beneficiaries and mismatched sowing declarations.
Crop loans and KCC at plot level. Banks that consume the AgriStack APIs (subject to consent) can verify the Farmer ID, see the actual crop sown on each parcel for the current season and underwrite Kisan Credit Card limits faster — relevant to fintechs and agri-NBFCs building digital KCC workflows.
Crop insurance (PMFBY) — YES-TECH and Digi-Claim. Plot-level Crop Sown Registry data closes the gap between the insured plot, the actual sown crop and the satellite/yield-cutting evidence used to settle Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana claims under the YES-TECH (technology-based yield estimation) and Digi-Claim frameworks.
Yield and drought forecasts. Krishi DSS layers — soil, weather, sowing progress and crop-condition indices from satellite — give MNCFC and state agriculture commissioners district- and block-level yield and stress forecasts ahead of the harvest, informing buffer-stock and procurement decisions.
Soil-test-based fertiliser advisories. 1:10,000 soil profile maps combined with Soil Health Card readings feed plot-level fertiliser recommendations, supporting the Soil Health Card scheme and the PM-PRANAM nudge to cut chemical fertiliser overuse.
Private-sector and agritech consumption. AgriStack is being designed as an open, federated, consent-driven set of APIs — comparable in intent to other India Stack layers — so that authorised agri-fintechs, input suppliers, FPO platforms and advisory startups can read farmer-consented data and write back service records, while the registry stays under government control.

Targets and timeline

The Press Information Bureau release of 2 September 2024 sets out the headline coverage targets:

Farmers Registry: around 11 crore farmers to be enrolled, of which around 6 crore in 2024–25, 3 crore in 2025–26 and 2 crore in 2026–27.
Digital Crop Survey / Crop Sown Registry: national roll-out from Kharif 2024 after 11-state pilots in 2023–24, with full coverage targeted in 2025–26.
Soil Profile Maps (1:10,000): around 142 million hectares of agricultural land to be mapped; around 29 million hectares already mapped at the time of approval.
Krishi DSS: launched at krishi-dss.gov.in in August 2024; data layers and downstream APIs to be deepened through 2026–27.

Data protection and consent

Farmer personal data flowing through AgriStack falls under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. In the AgriStack design, states are the data fiduciaries for farmer registers; the Centre operates the federated standards; and reads of farmer-level data by downstream services (banks, insurers, agritech platforms) are mediated by explicit farmer consent. Aadhaar linkage of the Farmer ID is consent-based, following the framework of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 and subsequent Supreme Court guidance.

How this connects with other planning on this site

The Digital Agriculture Mission is the data backbone behind a lot of what AgriBot already covers. The AgriStack Farmer ID is the same record that gates PM-Kisan instalments, Kisan Credit Card sanction and PMFBY enrolment; the Crop Sown Registry is the same plot-level sowing record that the YES-TECH and Digi-Claim workstreams under PMFBY consume. The 1:10,000 Soil Profile Map feeds the Soil Health Cardscheme's plot-level fertiliser advisories — the same nutrient-stewardship pathway that PM-PRANAM rewards. Krishi-DSS pulls in the weather, soil and satellite layers that station-level Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and state agriculture departments use for advisory and ATMA-led extension. Time your reading of these pages against the season using our India crop calendar.

References

Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India — Cabinet approval of the Digital Agriculture Mission, 2 September 2024, with outlay and pillar-wise targets.
Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (agriwelfare.gov.in) — AgriStack, Digital Crop Survey and Soil Profile Map programme pages and state MoU notifications.
Krishi Decision Support System (krishi-dss.gov.in) — central Krishi DSS portal launched August 2024.
ISRO – National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) — satellite products feeding Krishi DSS (crop condition indices, sowing progress, drought assessment).
India Meteorological Department (IMD) — block-level weather forecasts used in Krishi DSS and PMFBY workflows.
Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC) — satellite-based crop forecasts (FASAL, KISAN), YES-TECH and yield estimation under PMFBY.
ICAR – National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP), Nagpur — 1:10,000 soil profile map programme.
Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) — Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the governing data protection framework for farmer data in AgriStack.

Frequently asked questions

When was the Digital Agriculture Mission approved and how big is it?: The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, approved the Digital Agriculture Mission on 2 September 2024 with a total outlay of around ₹2,817 crore (of which the Central share is around ₹1,940 crore), as announced by the Press Information Bureau on the same day. The mission consolidates the AgriStack, Krishi Decision Support System and Soil Profile Map workstreams that the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare had been piloting since 2021–22.
What is AgriStack, in one paragraph?: AgriStack is the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare's federated digital public infrastructure for agriculture. It has three foundational registers: a Farmers Registry (one unique Farmer ID per farmer, linked to land records and — with consent — Aadhaar), a Crop Sown Registry (season-by-season, plot-level record of the crop sown on each parcel, captured via the Digital Crop Survey) and Geo-referenced village maps that align cadastral maps with satellite imagery. States are the data fiduciaries and operators; the Centre supplies the technology stack, standards and APIs.
Who owns the data — Centre, states or farmers?: States own and operate the farmer and crop registers; the Centre owns the standards, stack and federated APIs. Farmers' personally identifiable data is shared with downstream systems only on the basis of explicit consent, consistent with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — meaning a bank, insurer or advisory startup cannot read a farmer's AgriStack record without that farmer's authenticated consent.
How does this connect with the Soil Health Card and PMFBY?: The 1:10,000 soil profile maps under DAM provide the base layer; the Soil Health Card scheme provides the plot-level chemical-property readings that sit on top. Together they enable plot-level fertiliser advisories. For Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, the Crop Sown Registry verifies what was actually sown on the insured plot, while Krishi DSS layers (satellite-based crop condition, yield-cutting from DGCES) feed the YES-TECH / Digi-Claim yield-settlement workflow.
What is Krishi DSS and how is it different from older portals?: Krishi DSS (krishi-dss.gov.in) is a geospatial decision-support platform launched by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare in August 2024. Unlike older single-purpose portals (for example, the FASAL crop-forecast project at MNCFC or stand-alone soil portals), Krishi DSS is designed as an integrated layer that brings together AgriStack registers, ISRO–NRSC satellite products, IMD weather data, soil maps and MNCFC yield forecasts in a single API and visualisation stack — usable by Centre, states, researchers and (via authorised access) the private sector.
What should agritech founders and FPOs do about AgriStack today?: Three practical steps. First, follow the state-by-state Farmers Registry rollout — your product's onboarding flow should accept the Farmer ID as a primary key. Second, design data flows for consent: AgriStack reads are mediated by farmer consent and authorised data-fiduciary roles, not bulk scraping. Third, watch the published AgriStack API and standards documentation from the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare — Farmers Registry, Crop Sown Registry and Geo-referenced village map APIs are the foundational layers most third-party services will need.

Outlays, state-wise rollout schedules and API standards under the Digital Agriculture Mission evolve with each operational guideline. Confirm current status with the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, your state agriculture department and the AgriStack programme team before designing systems or services that depend on these registers.