THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A month after the launch of urban vegetable kiosks to provide pesticide-free vegetables and fruits to people in cities, the Kudumbashree Mission is launching a campaign called ‘Agri Nutri Garden’. The campaign aims to meet a family’s complete nutritional requirements by cultivating vegetables and fruits in each household. The state-level launch of the project will be held in Maranalloor in the capital city on Sunday.
The campaign will be implemented in all local body wards in the state. “This is part of our agricultural campaign that aims at making the state self-sufficient. Apart from boosting people’s health, we want to spread the message of farming. The Agri Nutri Garden scheme will be implimented in about 50 households in each ward of a district using the National Rural Livelihoods Mission funding. In case of excess produce, the family members will get an opportunity to sell the produce on Kudumbashree’s rural markets,” said an official.
Kudumbashree members have already started imparting training to the growers in each district. “Any five nutrition-rich vegetables such as tomato, amaranthus, pumpkin, brinjal, lady’s finger, Indian cucumber, coriander, mint and at least two fruit trees will be grown in these gardens in a minimum of three cents of land. We will form ward-level clusters of households which will include a president, secretary and office-bearers,” the official added.
Preparations for setting up Agri Nutri Gardens has already begun Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam districts. “In Thiruvananthapuram, we plan to implement the scheme in 65,000 households in 1,297 wards across 73 panchayats. Jaivika nurseries will supply the seeds,” said Reena David, Kudumbashree Mission district programme manager, Thiruvananthapuram. Excess produce can also be sold at
Krishi Bhavan with the intervention of community development societies (CDS).