ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka launched a raft of tools and a national digital platform for cultivation data and data-driven decision making with the support of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Gates Foundation.
The government on Thursday launched the Agriculture Enterprise Architecture Framework, Agriculture Interoperability Framework, Data Sharing Policies, and CROPIX, a national digital platform for crop data and decision-making.
The launch marked the formal introduction of a unified digital foundation designed to modernize agricultural governance, improve service delivery, and enable evidence-based decision-making across the sector, the FAO said in a statement jointly issued with the government and Gates Foundation.
“Together, these initiatives form the backbone of Sri Lanka’s emerging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for agriculture, addressing long-standing challenges related to fragmented data systems, institutional silos, and limited data sharing across government entities,” it said.
The Agriculture Enterprise Architecture Framework provides a strategic blueprint to align people, processes, data, and technology across agricultural institutions, ensuring that digital investments are interoperable, scalable, and future-ready.
Complementing this, the Agriculture Interoperability Framework and newly introduced Data Sharing Policies enable secure, standardised, and trusted exchange of agricultural data across ministries, departments, and digital platforms, the FAO said.
CROPIX operationalises the architecture and interoperability frameworks by integrating national crop registry, cultivation and production data, forecasting tools, extension services, near real-time field reporting, APIs and Open Data.
Through its web platform and mobile applications, CROPIX connects farmers, extension officers, planners, and policymakers around a single, trusted source of agricultural data.
“What we are witnessing today is the extension of Sri Lanka’s Digital Public Infrastructure into one of our most critical sectors,” Hans Wijayasuriya, Chief Advisor to the President on Digital Economy was quoted as saying at the launch.
“By applying enterprise architecture, interoperability, and trusted data-sharing principles to agriculture, we are ensuring that digital transformation delivers real value on the ground.”
“This approach enables scalable, secure systems that connect farmers to institutions, data to decisions, and policy to impact,” he said.
Vimlendra Sharan, FAO Representative for Sri Lanka and the Maldives, at the launch said through the new initiative Sri Lanka is positioning itself to respond more effectively to climate risks, improve service delivery, cater to dynamic market demands and make evidence-based decisions that leave no farmer behind. (Colombo/January 22/2026)
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