The Haryana state agricultural marketing board has designed and implemented farmers’ marketing assistance scheme to spruce up the post-harvest management infrastructure from farm-level to the market-level. The infrastructure so created will be backed by post-harvest management practices to be adopted by farmers. As many as 500 farmers will be trained under the scheme for proper sorting, grading and packing of the produce within a year.
A senior official of the board told FE, “A budget provision of Rs 15 lakh has been made during the current fiscal for implementing the scheme. The scheme seeks to provide financial assistance to farmer to get better remuneration for his produce. This will be done through value additions created by adopting the post-harvest management practices. Training will be given to the farmers on these practices, traceability, quality and marketing. Financial assistance will be provided for packaging material, tools, kits, equipments and facilitation in transportation for certain commodities to the markets or hubs.”
Any farmer with a land holding of up to 10 acres in the state growing identified fruits, vegetables or flowers will be eligible under the scheme. But the financial assistance to be given to a grower will not be more than Rs 5,000 per crop. The farmers will be provided with 50% financial support for buying packaging material like plastic crates, corrugated boxes etc to avoid the loss due to picking, putting, collecting, handling and transporting the goods.