AC gives nod to IFAD funding for sustained increase in the income of rural households

JAMMU, JANUARY 21: The Administrative Council (AC) which met here under the Chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha also took note of the Project Design Report (PDR) on Competitiveness Improvement of Agriculture and Allied Sectors Project in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (JKCIP) and progress made by the J&K Agriculture Production Department till date.

Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, Advisor to the Lieutenant Governor; Atal Dulloo, Chief Secretary; Mandeep Kumar Bhandari, Principal Secretary to LG attended the meeting.

As per the proposal JKCIP shall be implemented in J&K in 90 Blocks across all 20 Districts over next 7 years with the support of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to the tune of 100 million USD. The goal of the project is to contribute to the sustained increase in incomes of rural households by improving the competitiveness of farming operations.

The project objective is to improve the competitiveness of the famers through a value chain approach covering production, value addition and marketing coupled with business incubation with start-up/agri-enterprise support.

The total outreach of the project will be 300,000 households of which 141,000 will be women (47%), 90,000 youth (30%) and 30,000 vulnerable communities (SCs/STs) (10%) in total reaching 1.5 million individuals.

The project will have four interlinked components: (i) Climate-smart and market-led production; (ii) Agri-business ecosystem development support; (iii) Support to vulnerable communities; and (iv) Project Management.

The project will support the establishment of 45 new FPOs and strengthening of 56 existing FPOs.  It will also support the training of 1,085 trainers and 16,200 farmers, 800 water management systems, 1,650 protected cultivation units and the expansion of niche crops in 2,805 ha covering 14,025 farmers.

The project, in consonance with the mainstreaming priorities of IFAD, supports the most vulnerable groups comprising STs, SCs, and fisher folks to diversify their livelihood options and to increase their levels of income.