Jammu, Oct 28: An amount of Rs 6 crore has been sanctioned for implementation of vegetable initiative launched by the Agriculture Department in the current year. This was disclosed by the Minister for Agriculture,   Ghulam Hassan Mir during a meeting held at Jammu to review the progress in implementation of the project.
 Mir said that this new project namely National Initiative for Urban Vegetable Clusters has been launched under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana during the current year 2011-12 under which the clusters of vegetable cultivation will be taken up  in urban areas to boost the production of vegetables & assure availability of vegetables at affordable rates in safe & good  quality. In this regard, 15 clusters have been identified from Jammu, Samba, Udhampur, Rajouri, Reasi & Kathua Districts.
 The Agriculture Minister asked the program implementing officers of the department to become pro-active in identification of technology and input gaps and utilize their knowledge, extension and managerial skills to fill those gaps. He reminded them of their responsibility to facilitate the farming community in harmonizing the production practices so that timeliness of production and availability of supplies in the market gets regulated in a manner that growers get their due share in the money spent by the consumer for purchase of vegetables. He said that the scheme offers a unique opportunity to motivate youth towards the agricultural profession, increase the avenues for employment generation, reduce imports, increase exports and to augment supply of nutritious diet to the people, an official statement said.
 Giving details of the project the Director Agriculture Jammu,   Ajay Khajuria, informed that the main objective of the centrally sponsored schemes is to address all concerns related to both demand & supply of vegetables for Jammu city ,by enhancing vegetable production & productivity, improved nutritional security & income support to the vegetable farmers. Further the scheme will encourage establishment of an efficient supply chain of vegetables and facilitate creation of employment generation opportunities for skilled & unskilled persons especially unemployed youth. He further elaborated that the Vegetable Initiatives will serve to assist the entire value chain right from stage of pre-production to the consumer table through appropriate interventions.
 It was further disclosed in the meeting that the base line survey to assess the extent of vegetable supply chain to Jammu city, identify bottlenecks & the vegetable growing clusters and to organize vegetable growers into farmer association/groups, back-up support is being provided by the Small Farmers Agri business Consortium (SFAC) New Delhi who have further nominated Indian Society of Agri-business Professionals and M/s Ac-tech Ahro Private Limited for taking up the above works respectively. The initiative also provides for identification/selection of aggregators to enable tie up with farmers association/groups and to  coordinate with ICAR & State Agriculture University to provide improved varieties of vegetable seed/seedlings besides  addressing issues in the credit supply chain with support from NABARD.
 Measures for production & productivity enhancement by adopting improved technologies like protected cultivation, micro irrigation, improved cultivars etc. and to facilitate primary processing, sorting, grading, washing, packaging & value addition clusters of vegetables will also be taken up under the project. Creation of storage & transport infrastructure, post harvest management & suitable tie up chains for vegetable marketing is also envisaged/ to this end Cold Storage units with capacity of 5000 metric tones will be established with financial involvement of Rs. 84.00 lakhs as assistance. Besides, 3 No. of primary/Mobile processing units of 6 mt. each will be established with 50% assistance to the extent of Rs. 12.00 lakhs each having a total financial involvement of Rs. 36.00 lakhs under the scheme. To promote the marketing of vegetables, 15 No. of collection centers with an assistance of Rs 4.00 lacs each & 25 No. of motorized vending carts with an assistance of Rs. 0.50 lakhs/cart will be under taken.
 During the meeting, Chief Agriculture Officer, Jammu, Sushil Sahney disclosed that the Base Line Survey under the project, has already been taken up and the expert team from Indian Society of Agri -business Professionals had surveyed the entire vegetable catchment areas of Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Chenani in Udhampur district, Sunderbani in Rajouri district & Pouni in Reasi district & the necessary information & the database have been collected by expert team & further analysis is in process.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 IST