Maharashtra integrating agricultural data

The Maharashtra government is set to improve the agricultural data and its analysis.

The exercise is aimed at making the data regarding agricultural landholdings, crop patterns, various categories of farmers and other necessary information, available easily.

“The ownership of land, which crops are cultivated in areas and irrigation resources are recorded by Maharashtra State Settlement Commissioner and Directorate of Land Records.

Digitisation

The entire data of more than half of the state’s population has been digitised and validated. Now it is being shared with the state agriculture department.

“Such integration of data is essential for the state for various types of works,” Maharashtra Settlement Commissioner Sambhaji Kadu Patil said.

Meanwhile, as the micro-level crop pattern and land ownership data is available with the settlement commissionerate, state Agriculture department has decided to access it for carrying out agricultural Census.

Patil said conducting such census used to be a tedious process earlier as data was collected manually.

State Agriculture Commissioner Vikas Deshmukh said the first stage of the Census 2016 is going to be finished by the end of this year.

A senior Agriculture department officer said once comprehensive data is available, it will help the administration in policy formation.

Job potential

“The data also provides trends in agriculture, farmers inclination and variations in cropping patterns. Agriculture is still one of the largest job-creating vocations and it is labour-intensive as well.

“Comprehensive data on agricultural sector is necessary and its proper integration would be more helpful,” he said.

For instance, if the number of marginal farmers is growing in the state, then it means agricultural productivity is likely to affect.

“Marginal farmers cannot produce foodgrains in large quantities, which would lead to state looking for buying food grain or importing through Union government to meet the requirements of the people. Hence such integration of data is required,” according to the officer.