Syllabus Section: Agriculture

Why in News?

To ensure holistic growth of horticulture, Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfaree Shri Narendra Singh Tomar virtually launched the Horticulture Cluster Development Programme (CDP) 

About:

• Implementing Agency: It is a, central sector programme will be implemented by the National Horticulture Board (NHB) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.
• Aim: CDP aims at growing and developing identified horticulture clusters to make them globally competitive.
  In a pilot phase, the programme will be implemented in 12 horticulture clusters out of the total 53 clusters selected for the programme.

• Based on the learnings from the pilot project, the programme will be scaled up to cover all the identified clusters.

• The clusters of the pilot phase include Shopian (J&K) and Kinnaur (H.P.) for Apple, Lucknow (U.P.), Kutch (Gujarat) and Mahbubnagar (Telangana) for Mango, Anantpur (A.P.) and Theni (T.N.) for Banana, Nasik (Maharashtra) for Grapes, Siphahijala (Tripura) for Pineapple, Solapur (Maharashtra) and Chitradurga (Karnataka) for Pomegranate and West Jaintia Hills (Meghalaya) for Turmeric
• These clusters will be implemented through Cluster Development Agencies (CDAs) which are appointed on the recommendations of the respective State/UT Government.
• The programme is expected to converge with other initiatives of the Government such as the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund and community farming assets and will leverage the central sector scheme of the Ministry for Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs).

• Agriculture Infrastructure Fund is a medium - long term financing facility for investment in projects for post-harvest management infrastructure.

Expected Benefits from the Programme:

• It will address all major issues related to the Indian horticulture sector including pre-production, production, post-harvest management, logistics, marketing and branding.
• It will help inleveraging geographical specialisation and promote integrated and market-led development of horticulture clusters. 
• It has a huge potential to transform the entire horticulture ecosystem improving its global competitiveness by building last-mile connectivity with the use of multimodal transport for the efficient and timely evacuation and transport of horticulture produce.
• The programme framework will ensure an astute engagement of state governments through CDAs, and institutionalization of learnings for future replication.
• It will ensure scaling up of the create cluster-specific brands to entrench them into national and global value chains bringing higher remuneration to the farmers”.

Source: PIB