Farmers In Himachal Get New Life Through Horticulture Project

The new project will transform Himachal Pradesh into a fruit state with collective management, production, marketing, value addition, and processing of crops produced from orchards being established under this project, said Horticulture Minister Jagat Singh Negi.

He added that provisions have been made for land development, seed, plantation, irrigation, fencing, mass production, marketing, processing, and other facilities.

Under a horticulture initiative that offers composite solar fencing and subsidies on agricultural equipment, fields in the lower slopes of Himachal that were abandoned because of wildlife threats and a lack of irrigation are now dotted with fruit trees.

One such community that has come alive with luscious pomegranate orchards is Kaihdru village on the Shimla-Hamirpur National Highway. Prakash Chand and Ramesh Chand of Kaihdru are delighted that their pomegranate and sweet lime plants are now producing fruit.

Horticulturist Madan Lal expressed his family's distress about crop destruction caused by wild animals. When the family shifted to growing fruit, things began to change. Similar to this, Ram Chand, another farmer, claimed that the novel cropping concept has significantly improved the quality of life for his family, who are now eager to adopt fruit crops.

The modification is the result of the Himachal Pradesh Sub-tropical Horticulture, Irrigation, and Value Addition (SHIVA) Pilot Project, which envisioned horticulture development based on the seed to market concept with provisions for composite solar fencing to protect fruits from wild animals and subsidy on agricultural machinery and drip irrigation system.

In Himachal, around 75% of the arable land is rainfed, and hundreds of farmers have given up cultivation because of the threat posed by wild animals.

According to Horticulture Minister Negi, "Under the pilot project, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had finalised Project Readiness Financing of Rs 75 crore for testing of four fruits — guava, litchi, pomegranate, and citrus fruits — in 17 clusters of 12 development blocks in four districts covering a total of 200 hectares of area. The results were very encouraging."

“I have visited several blocks and the response is overwhelming and farmers want more area to be covered under the project” said Negi.

More than 25,000 farmer families will benefit from the primary project's identification of almost 6,000 hectares of land in 28 development blocks spread over the seven districts of Sirmaur, Solan, Una, Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra, and Mandi.

In accordance with the project, the Horticulture Department's authorities have chosen to build a sweet lime (mosambi) and pomegranate cluster in the village of Kaihdru. Rajeshwar Parmar, the department's deputy director for horticulture, stated that the department's approach for the initiative in the Hamirpur area is "one cluster, one fruit."

Under this strategy, sweet lime trees were planted on a large scale along with pomegranates. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the ADB which approved a loan of Rs 1072 crore for the project.