The farmer card (krishak card) is an integrated digital identity card for every farmer in Bangladesh. Announced in the BNP's election manifesto, the farmer card programme is an integrated digital identity for the country's farmers, an initiative to ensure access to several services under one umbrella. Many countries have farmer cards to make agricultural services easier. Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, India, Pakistan and others offer farmers digital ID cards, mobile banking, subsidies and training services.

These countries use farmer cards to ensure transparency and efficiency in supplying farm inputs, farm credit, spreading sustainable farming technology and overall agricultural management. Like other countries, the Bangladesh government has decided to collect and provide all farming information and deliver the necessary digital agricultural services through a modern farmer card system.

The farmer card was one of the key pledges in the government's election manifesto, and the government has promised to introduce it as part of a fundamental transformation of agriculture.

The government has taken many steps to move agriculture forward, and the farmer card is one of the main ones. It is essentially a chip-based card linked to a self-contained digital database that will hold the farmer's landholding, the types of crops grown and other farming information. This will allow all agriculture, fisheries and livestock services to reach farmers transparently, on time and as quickly as possible.

Management weaknesses from production through to the collection of produce at the grassroots, and the dominance of middlemen, are the main realities of the sector, and farmers suffer most. Sometimes bad seed means crops fall short; sometimes a large harvest makes prices collapse, so farmers cannot recover even their production costs by selling. At other times the effects of climate change or a lack of storage mean surplus crops are spoiled, or farmers are forced to sell cheaply. In most cases they end up losing money. Against this background, the launch of the farmer card programme as part of fulfilling an election pledge is an initiative that raises public hopes. If fully implemented, it could change much of farmers' present situation. The precondition is that there must be no management weakness in its implementation.

For a long time there have been complaints of middlemen, irregularities and lack of information in distributing farm subsidies, incentives and loans. A similar initiative was taken in 2007, when "agricultural input assistance cards" were issued, and "fisherman cards" have been given out since 2015. But research by many of those involved has found that none of these was effective. In many cases the genuine beneficiaries were left out while powerful groups got the benefits. So the reasons why these earlier initiatives could not be implemented successfully must be considered, and the utmost care taken in distributing the cards.

Farmers in genuine need must be identified through an accurate digital database. If the real beneficiaries are wrongly identified, the initiative will not achieve its aim. Department of Agricultural Extension data mention 1 crore 65 lakh farming households that depend on agriculture in one way or another, including landless, marginal, small and large farmers. As a pre-pilot, it has been decided to distribute 22,000 farmer cards at first, more than 20,000 of them to landless, marginal and small farmers. When distribution later begins for farmers across the country, the government must still be careful in choosing beneficiaries. Local administrative capacity and control of corruption are therefore very important. There are past examples of irregularities in drawing up lists and distributing benefits in various social safety-net programmes, and lessons must be learnt from them.

To make the initiative effective, equal attention must be given to agriculture's other structural problems, such as improving irrigation, tackling the effects of climate change, ensuring fair prices and modernising markets. If the government's stated plans for canal digging, restoring groundwater levels and building cold storage are carried out, the impact of the farmer card programme will multiply. Cash support alone cannot ensure farmers' overall development; an integrated agricultural policy is needed.

An important aspect is the storage and marketing of produce. When output is high in season farmers do not get fair prices, while consumers pay high prices off-season. Solving this double problem requires better cold storage and supply-chain management. If the farmer card can connect farmers to these facilities, it could become a complete support system.

The plan to link the card to bank accounts and deliver financial support directly will bring farmers into the formal financial system. This will increase transparency and could give farmers easier access to credit, insurance and other financial services. But the effectiveness of this digital system will depend on technical capacity in the field, banking infrastructure and farmers' practical skills.

The risk of the farmer card creating dependence on particular dealers or supply channels must also be considered. If farmers are forced to buy seed, fertiliser or other inputs from a set source, competition in the market could fall and farmers' freedom could be limited. Policy must therefore ensure alternative sources and a competitive market structure.

Defining who is a farmer is also an important question. If farmers are identified only by land ownership, large numbers of sharecroppers, farm labourers and women workers could be left outside the system, even though a large part of farm production depends on their labour. The government must therefore have a truly inclusive picture.

The farmer card is a promising initiative, but its success will depend on implementation. Without transparency, planning based on accurate data and effective monitoring in the field, it will not deliver the expected results. The government's main aim should be that farmers truly benefit from it. "If farmers do well, the country does well" is not just a political promise but also a great economic truth. The hope, then, is that the farmer card does not remain a paper project but becomes a strategy for real change.

The writer is a journalist.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.