JEYPORE: The district unit of the Odisha Livelihood Mission (OLM ) in a joint venture with the Divisional Forest Office of Jeypore, has started pineapple farming amid bamboo plantation as part of value addition project in Nuagada village under Boipariguda range here. The multi-farming exercise is an effort to provide income support to tribal Vana Surkhya Samiti (VSS) members as well as to protect the standing plants.
During the project’s inauguration on Wednesday, OLM officials handed pineapple suckers to beneficiaries for plantation in between bamboo crops across 10 hectare (ha) in the village in presence of forest officials. Officials of OLM procured 2.5 lakh pineapple suckers from Tripura at a cost of `14.5 lakh for the programme.
Sources said, VSS members of Nuagada had urged Jeypore DFO to carry out some plantation in the village to offset denudation besides associated income generation. Accordingly, in July, the Forest department selected 10 ha land in the village and planted bamboo. Few months later, the VSS members again appealed for a value addition programme for protection of plants along with ecological management on the same patches. Soon after, the Forest department took up the proposal with the district rural development agency and the administration agreed to it.
Asked, Jeypore DFO NSJP Singh said, “This is a value addition programme organised by the Forest department in convergence with OLM. The pineapple farming is likely to fetch up to `50 lakh income to about 60 beneficiaries in the next one and half years.”
Koraput OLM manager Sasmita Samantaray informed that this project can provide livelihood to locals round the year apart from protecting the existing plantation. The programme, touted to be a first in the forest division, is being monitored by experts from M.S. Swaminathan Research Centre, Jeypore.