The Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a loan agreement worth $130 million on June 08 in order to increase agricultural productivity, improve access to irrigation and promote horticulture agribusinesses to raise farmers’ income in Himachal Pradesh, a release by the Ministry of Finance said on Monday. “The project builds upon a pilot financed by ADB’s project readiness facility which demonstrated the subtropical horticulture production over 200 hectares and prepared the draft water user association (WUA) act and the draft state horticulture development strategy,” said Takeo Konishi, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission, for ADB.
The project interventions will help increase the income and resilience to the effects of climate change of at least 15,000 farm households across 7 districts of the state namely Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra, Mandi, Sirmour, Solan, and Una. “These households have stopped farming or have reduced their farming areas because of a lack of irrigation facilities and crop damage by wild and stray animals,” it said. The project will improve on-farm irrigation and water management in about 6,000 hectares of farmland by rehabilitating or building new irrigation schemes and strengthening the capacity of WUAs for micro irrigation management through joint efforts from the state’s Jal Shakti Vibhag (Water Resources Department) and Department of Horticulture (DOH).
It will also help create an ecosystem to enhance farmers’ access to markets of subtropical horticulture. The farmers will be organised into cluster-wide community horticulture production and marketing associations (CHPMAs) and district-wide CHPMA cooperative societies. The project will also modernise public and private subtropical horticulture nursery facilities for improved plant health, and boost beneficiary farmers’ access to information and communication technologies, and other digital agri-technology systems for real-time farm advisories and better CHPMA management.