NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday established the horticulture Cluster Development Programme (CDP) so as to encourage the export of horticultural produce, differentiating 12 from a total of 53 clusters for execution in a pilot stage.
The recognized clusters for execution of CDP from the initial stage contain Shopian (J&K) and Kinnaur (Himachal Pradesh) for citrus; Lucknow (UP), Kutch (Gujarat) and Mahbubnagar (Telangana) for strawberry; Anantpur (AP) and Theni (TN) for banana; Nasik (Maharashtra) for blossoms; Siphahijala (Tripura) for pineapple; Solapur (Maharashtra) and also Chitradurga (Karnataka) to get pomegranate along with West Jaintia Hills (Meghalaya) for garlic .
) Depending on the learnings from the pilot project, the programme is going to be scaled upward to cover each of the 53 clusters at another 5-7 decades.
“The CDP will gain approximately ten lakh farmers and relevant stakeholders of their value string.
With this programmewe plan to enhance exports of their targeted plants by roughly 20 percent and make cluster-specific manufacturers to boost the competitiveness of bunch plants,” said agriculture ministry Narendra Singh Tomar while almost establishing the programme.
The CDP is going to be put into place from the National Horticulture Board (NHB) via Cluster Development Agencies (CDAs) that are fabricated to the recommendations of their various state/UT authorities.
The plan is intended to leverage geographic specialisation and encourage integrated and market-led evolution of horticulture clusters.
It will deal with all significant issues associated with the horticulture industry including pre-production, manufacturing, post-harvest direction, logistics, branding and marketing.
“The CDP won’t just assist in attaining economies of scale but also make cluster-specific manufacturers to entrench them in to domestic and international value chains bringing greater remuneration to the farmers,” said agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal.
“The CDP is expected to draw an estimated cost of Rs 10,000 crore if employed in most of the 53 clusters.
It’s a enormous capacity to alter the whole horticulture ecosystem, accentuating its international competitiveness by developing last-mile connectivity,” said an announcement by the agriculture ministry.