Farmers to benefit from Horticulture Cluster Development Programme (CDP): Union Agri Min

Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has said that the overall development of horticulture in the country would be focused on with the help of the implementation of the Cluster Development Programme (CDP) and it would be emphasized that the farmers should be benefited from this programme. He said that the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Manipur, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, etc. should also be included in the list of 55 clusters, identified with their focus/main crops. Tomar said that the land available with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-affiliated institutions within the identified clusters should be utilized for the implementation of this programme. He also emphasized crop diversification and linking this ambitious programme with the market for produce sale and capacity building.

The Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has prepared the Horticulture CDP, for which a meeting was held under the chairmanship of Tomar for its proper implementation. In the meeting, Tomar told the concerned officials that the main objective of the government was to promote the agriculture sector in the country and to increase the income of the farmers by giving them a reasonable price for their produce, so the interest of the farmers should be paramount in the centre of any programme/scheme.

Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Chaudhary, who participated virtually in the meeting, said that under the programme there was a need for geo-tagging of infrastructure for benefiting small and marginal farmers, tracking of activities implemented in the fields, monitoring purposes, etc.

The meeting was informed that the CDP had great potential to transform the entire horticulture ecosystem by creating last-mile connectivity with the use of multimodal transport for efficient and timely evacuation and transportation of horticulture produce. The CDP will also create cluster-specific brands, while helping the economy, to integrate them into national and global value chains, thereby providing higher remuneration to farmers. The CDP will benefit around 10 lakh farmers and related stakeholders along the value chain. The CDP aims to improve exports of targeted crops by about 20 per cent and create cluster-specific brands to enhance the competitiveness of cluster crops. A lot of investment will also come into the horticulture sector through CDP.

Union Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja, Joint Secretary Priya Ranjan and Horticulture Commissioner Prabhat Kumar along with officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and National Horticulture Board (NHB) were also present at the meeting.