VIJAYAWADA: The World Bank recently approved a 172.20 million US dollars project to increase agricultural productivity, profitability, and climate resilience of poor and marginalised farmers while ensuring that farming continues to remain a financially viable activity. The loan has a six-year grace period and a maturity period of 24 years. The project will benefit over 200,000 families of poor and marginalised farmers, agro-entrepreneurs, women and other vulnerable groups. It will work with 1,000 Small-Scale Community-Based Irrigation (SSCBI) systems spread over an area of 90,000 hectares, covering over 1,000 villages across 12 most climate vulnerable districts of Andhra Pradesh.
The Andhra Pradesh Integrated Irrigation and Agriculture Transformation Project will be implemented in rural areas largely dependent upon rain-fed agriculture. It will strengthen the resilience of poor and marginalised farmers against adverse climate events by improving access to irrigation, drought seed varieties and post-harvest technology that are aimed at improving soil health, water-use efficiency and crop productivity.
The agreement for the project was signed by Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the Government of India; PS Raghavaiah, State Project Director, APIIATP on behalf of Andhra Pradesh government and Junaid Ahmad, Country Director, World Bank India.
Climate variability, small land holdings, larger dependency on rainfall, deterioration in the quality of natural resources has affected the State’s agriculture performance. “Strategic shifts are needed to transform AP’s agriculture into a modern and resilient system, where rural poor, largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, is able to conserve water, a scarce resource,” said Junaid Ahmad.