Under the able leadership of Hon'ble Chief Minister Shri Nitish Kumar, the Government of Bihar has taken a historic step in the agriculture sector and has formed the country's first digital agriculture directorate. With the approval of the Council of Ministers, this initiative has been started under the Agriculture Road Map with the aim of providing the benefits of the schemes of the Agriculture Department to the farmers of the state in real time, forecasting season-wise and crop-wise coverage, production and productivity and developing an integrated database management system.

Through the Digital Crop Survey, accurate data will now be available in every crop season, which will make policy making and resource distribution more effective. This directorate will promote the use of innovation and modern technologies along with providing the benefits of schemes under Aadhaar based Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to the farmers. Since the year 2018, grants to farmers, input subsidy in case of disaster and diesel subsidy are being made available directly to their bank accounts through DBT system in the state. At present, more than 2 crore rayat and non-rayat male and female farmers are registered on the DBT portal, which in itself is the largest digital farmer registration in the country.

This initiative under the leadership of the Hon'ble Chief Minister will make Bihar a leader in agricultural digitalization. Now farmers will have access to digital soil health cards, digital general crop estimation survey for crop estimation, drone technology in plant protection and artificial intelligence based services in agriculture. Also, mobile applications and e-governance tools will be developed and implemented to facilitate the work of farmers and agriculture officials.

The main objective of the Digital Agriculture Directorate is the integration of the database of agriculture and allied sectors, so that all services and information are available on a single platform. This will not only increase crop production, but will also accelerate weather based advice, market information and crisis management.

This step will prove to be a milestone towards making Bihar technologically empowered, self-reliant and a national leader in the field of agriculture. The Digital Agriculture Directorate will increase the income of farmers and give new impetus to the rural economic development of the state.