For the first time in the history of Jharkhand, seed distribution among farmers has been initiated well ahead of the arrival of the Kharif season. Following the instruction of Chief Minister, Hemant Soren, the Directorate of Agriculture is distributing seeds to the farmers through a blockchain based seed traceability platform. Through this system, timely availability and quality of seeds is being ensured to the farmers.
In this year before the onset of Kharif the department launched seed distribution on March 11.
Director Agriculture, Nesha Oraon informed that Jharkhand is the first State in the Country to use the block chain system to measure the progress and implementation of Government schemes. “This will play a crucial role in the transparent execution of schemes. There will be a crackdown on middle men. It is the utmost priority of this Government to make quality seeds available to the farmers at the right time,” she added.
“Due to timely availability of seeds, the demand for seeds from farmers has registered an increase of almost four times as compared to last year. The demand for 38,640 quintal seeds of paddy, arrhar, ragi, groundnut, maize, urad and moong has been met for the first time till May 2022. The total seed distributed in the Kharif season registered an increase of 75 per cent with an increase in the production of coarse cereals and pulses by 9 per cent and 2 per cent respectively,” said Oraon.
The Agriculture Director further informed that due to the empanelment of the new government seed agency, the seed prices have come down by 4 to 16 per cent as compared to the previous year. The budgetary allocation in the current financial year has been almost doubled from the previous year and it is Rs 40 crore for this financial year, she added.
In the Kharif season, in just one month, 101, 065 farmers have been registered in the Blockchain based seed traceability platform. Also a total of 123 Farmer Producer Organisations ( FPOs) have been registered. The registration process is still in progress. Through this system, along with seeds, the benefits of other Government agriculture schemes of the Directorate of Agriculture will also be provided to the registered farmers and FPOs. Receiving the benefit of the Government schemes, an OTP will be sent to the registered mobile of the farmers, through which the distribution shall be confirmed.
This system is being employed to issue supply orders from the Directorate of Agriculture and District Agriculture Officer for seed distribution and to trace the supply of seeds from seed producing agencies to the godowns. This will enable timely supply of seeds to testing laboratories, distributors, retailers and most importantly, the farmers. Along with this, the empaneled seed supplier under this system will be able to track the movement of seeds including details of the supply order received, receipt issued by the warehouse, status of supply by various unique identifiers including QR codes.
Through the Blockchain based seed traceability platform, seed distribution centers like LAMPS, PACS, Block, Panchayat and others will be able to share their experience with the system through the learning centre as well be able to connect with the farmers’ system to interact with the competent authority. This system will also ensure timely dissemination of information and quality maintenance of the supply chain of seeds, access and quality of seeds to farmers which will help in providing more robust infrastructure towards seed distribution programs in the State in the times to come. Also, this system shall create a database which will map each farmer to the benefits and the schemes that they have availed.