Azerbaijan gets digital with “eagro”

Electronic Agricultural Information System – e-agriculture in Azerbaijan

Currently, the sector accounts for less than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and employs around 40 percent of the population. To further develop the agriculture sector, the government of Azerbaijan has adopted a strategic roadmap on agricultural production and processing in 2016 that foresees the establishment of an integrated electronic information portal was one of the major targets aiming to create a unified system that incorporates basic principles of the data management to form a comprehensive agricultural information database.

In 2019, the eagro.az website was launched as the online platform of Azerbaijan’s Electronic Agricultural Information System (EKTIS) to be closer to the farmers. EKTIS is an innovative initiative that combines the principles of proximity, good governance and the application of innovations to farmers and ensures access to agricultural services and transparency in the provision of these services.

A unified geographic information system is incorporated into the platform, thus, EKTIS also includes data on administrative-territorial boundaries, as well as on areas of seed, hazelnut, cotton producers, greenhouse areas, enterprises and facilities under the Ministry, their lands, land use changes, salinized areas, and new areas assigned for cultivation and other relevant information.

Farmers as beneficiaries of the system will be able to use EKTIS to manage subsidies, seeds, and fertilizers and also to sell their products. More than 470 000 farmers across the country have already registered to the Electronic Agricultural Information System, and farmers registered information on 719 000 hectares of planted crops.