The State Government on Tuesday decided to develop more urban vegetable clusters to ensure supply of fresh vegetables to the consumers.
Urban vegetable cluster was introduced during 2011-12 and extended to Sambalpur, Berhampur and Rourkela during 2012-13. At present, Cuttack, Puri, Khurda, Nayagarh, Jajpur, Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Keonjhar and Ganjam districts have been covered under the programme.
The Horticulture Department has been asked to extend marketing support and supply of vegetables through cool-chain system to the urban clusters. Apart from increasing the sale outlets in urban centres, the Department will initiate measures to set up fixed stations of veggie-cart for easy accessibility to fresh vegetables products.
The urban vegetable cluster programme was reviewed by Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra at a high level meeting here.
According to the meeting, different types of vegetables are grown over an area of 6.94 lakh hectares in the State with annual production of 89.61 lakh tonnes. It has been estimated that the daily requirement of vegetables in the city market is around 380 tonnes.
Since there is wide scope for commercial production of vegetables, the
meeting decided to extend necessary support to farmers to enhance productivity by ensuring supply of quality seeds and other inputs.
The Horticulture Department was asked to develop quality seedlings by partnering with reputed private firms. The Cool Chain marketing infrastructure will be developed to fetch more returns to farmers.
Vegetable seedling production centres in government farms are under progress at Bhubaneswar, Nimapara, Jajpur and Banki. It has been decided to augment these efforts and enhance productivity to meet the growing demand of vegetables.