Pakistan is digitizing its agricultural backbone with the launch of a National “Agri Stack,” which aims to streamline farmer access to credit, subsidies and markets, in part by issuing them digital IDs and linking the credentials with other records.
Agriculture remains a pillar of Pakistan’s economy as it accounts for around a fifth of GDP while employing more than a third of the workforce. Yet the sector grapples with low yields, fragmented landholdings, water scarcity and increasing climate volatility.
Compounding these persistent challenges, many farmers lack formal identity documents or credit histories, effectively shutting them out of formal financing channels. Under the Agri Stack initiative, the government will build a secure, unified digital platform known as PAKGROW that assigns every farmer a digital ID and links it to land records, crop data, weather forecasts and market prices. In Punjab, the provincial government is working on a system to assign digital IDs to plots of land.
“The Agri Stack will enable verified farmer identities, land data integration, precision advisory, and efficient delivery of services like subsidies, crop insurance and credit,” said Federal IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja, according to a statement from the ministry.
Pilot projects over the next 12 to 18 months will target smart delivery of input subsidies, weather-indexed crop insurance, alternative data credit scoring and real-time market linkages.
Major partners in the rollout include the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR), the Land Information and Management System (LIMS) and the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC). At the consultation, officials green-lit a steering committee co-chaired by the IT and Food Security ministries, alongside a technical working group focused on data governance and cybersecurity.
“This is the architecture for an inclusive and tech-driven agricultural transformation under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Digital Nation Pakistan, in collaboration with the Special Investment Facilitation Council,” Khawaja said.
The thinking behind the Agri Stack is that by consolidating who each farmer is, what land they cultivate and which crops they grow, authorities, banks and agri-businesses can automatically tailor loans, insurance products, input subsidies and real-time agronomic advice.
Maj Gen (R) M Ayub Ahsan Bhatti, director general of LIMS, described the platform as a game-changer for smallholders. He said PAKGROW would “innovate the agricultural arena of Pakistan by transforming and improving the lives of small farmers and convening policymaking.”
Officials say the Agri Stack will integrate satellite-based crop monitoring, secure digital identities for farmers, trusted payment infrastructure, and real-time market access to build a “digitally empowered agricultural future” for Pakistan.
Crucially, it would also help rural producers connect more directly with buyers, enhancing transparency, boosting productivity, and raising incomes in a sector vital to both Pakistan’s economy and food security. However, such a promising vision might not be so easy to achieve in reality.
Neighboring India has its own version of Pakistan’s initiative, also known as AgriStack, with the Indian government aiming to generate 110 million farmer IDs by 2026-27. Farmer ID creation relies on Aadhaar making the Aadhaar-linked digital identity for farmers, known also as Kisan Pehchaan Patra or Kisan card, mandatory for farmers. A centralized database then closely tracks farmers’ personal and agricultural data, such as crops sown and mobile number.
The initiative allows farmers to access benefits from both the central government and state government schemes via the farmer ID when previous benefit applications needed repeated e-KYC processes.
However, the viability of India’s program has been questioned with critics pointing to issues of jurisdiction, digital capability, and lack of digital literacy among farmers. India’s AgriStack journey suggests implementation and roll-out is not so simple.
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digital government | digital ID | Digital Pakistan | identity management | land registry | Pakistan | Pakistan Agri Stack