Jammu, Aug 3: As a step towards assuring availability of safe and good quality vegetables at affordable prices to the consumers and better income to the farmers, the Department of Agriculture has taken up implementation of the “Vegetable Initiative for Urban Clusters” under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana in the current year.
 This, according to an official statement, was disclosed in an officers meeting and designated aggregators for the project, held at the Directorate of Agriculture Jammu, to work out modalities of the programme as per the guidelines of scheme under the Chairmanship of Director Agriculture, Jammu, Ajay Khajuria.
 To begin with, the programme will be launched in the peri-urban areas of Jammu city and will involve a national level agency to provide professional support services towards baseline survey, organization of farmers groups in identified clusters, provision for credit with support from NABARD, assessment of technology gaps and development of PHM infrastructure etc.
 The Director Agriculture emphasized that the main aim of the project is establishment of economically sustainable vegetable production systems around Jammu city by way of creation of sustainable farmer producer organizations, facilitating multilevel buying arrangement and capacity building and entrepreneurship of development of farmers. The strategy will include market survey, identification of potential buyers/exporters and to promote sale of vegetable produce with retail chains. It also includes linkages with other agencies such as, banking institutions, APMC, NHM etc. the marketing strategy involves formation of primary groups, capacity building on agribusiness management and formation of marketing clusters.
 Khajuria further informed that the implementation of the project will increase the production level of vegetables in Jammu region and will make the local vegetable market self reliant. It was also disclosed in the meeting that there is a great scope for export of vegetables if proper storage, handling and marketing strategies are adopted.

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