India is the second-largest producer of horticulture crops. It accounts for 10.9% and 8.6% of the world’s fruit and vegetable production, respectively. Despite this, India’s share in global horticulture exports amounts to a mere 1.7% in vegetables and 0.5% in fruits. Horticulture Cluster Development Program (CDP) was launched to address this serious anomaly.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW) has recently launched Horticulture CDP to ensure the holistic growth of the horticulture sector in India. This central sector scheme aims at the growth and development of identified horticulture clusters to make them globally competitive. As a pilot phase, this has been implemented in 12 horticulture clusters out of 53 selected for the program. Let’s explore more about it here.
What is the horticulture CDP scheme all about?
- The program encompasses all the aspects vital to the sector’s holistic development including production, post-harvest management, logistics, marketing, and branding.
- Horticulture CDP will bring all the stakeholders (including farmers) together and ensure a common pool of resources accessible to each one of them. This is likely to benefit about 10 lakh farmers and move them closer to doubling their income.
- This also seeks to make horticulture clusters globally competitive. The program aims to create cluster-specific brands and improve exports of targeted crops by approximately 20%.
- There will be different clusters for cultivating specific fruits and vegetables. Some of the clusters that have been finalized so far include Lucknow (UP), Kutch (Gujarat), & Mahbubnagar (Telangana) for mangoes, Shopian (J&K) & Kinnaur (HP) for apples, etc.
- The program is expected to attract an investment of ₹10,000 crores when implemented in all the 53 clusters.
What is the scope of the horticulture CDP?
The horticulture CDP is a well-intended scheme. However, its success depends on various factors. One of them is the involvement of all the stakeholders in specific clusters including producers, farmers, FPOs, agencies, and exporters. This needs to be reinforced further by advanced infrastructure, packaging technology, storage facilities, and adherence to strict quality standards.
India’s horticulture sector has shown huge potential in the past years. Horticulture production has doubled from approximately 14.6 crore tonnes in 2001-02 to 31.4 crore tonnes in 2018-19 and is expected to grow even more. This surge in the production of fruits and vegetables would come down to how they are being managed in the entire supply chain. Before getting sold, these products are taken to the agricultural markets or mandis. Commission agents act as an intermediary between the customers and sellers in those mandis. He helps both the parties in cracking a better deal and manages to keep a track of it in his mandi software. Today, many Commission agents are relying on ChargeERP to record their daily financial transactions.
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