Bhubaneswar: A Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) is signed between the International Centre for Research in Agro-forestry (ICRAF) and the Odisha government’s directorate of soil conservation and
watershed development for implementation of the project on ‘Enabling small land holders in Odisha to produce and consume more nutritious food through agro-forestry systems’
The MoA was signed by ICRAF programme’s South Asia regional director ,Dr. Javed Rizvi, and the commissioner & director social conservation and watershed development Sujata Kartikeyan in the presence of agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy, agriculture production commissioner Gagan Kumar Dhal, and agriculture principal secretary Sourav Garg.
The ICRAF which is also known as the World Agroforestry Centre, a leading International Development Institution will implement this project. The project is intended to be implemented in 5000 hectares in Nuapada and
Bolangir districts covering 180 villages in 30 Gram Panchayats with the objective to arrest migration of labour while developing agro forestry modules for the State. Project is expected to deal with 5000 households comprising of a total of estimated 30000 men, women and children. The project will be implemented over the three years with the
project cost of Rs.19.18 crores.
The overall objective of the project is to enable small holders to produce diverse and nutritious food, proposed project will focus on following specific objectives: Create awareness about benefits of consuming diversified nutritious farm produce, including, fruits, vegetables, and other tree based produce, such as flowers, pods, leaves.
Introduce and accelerate adoption of suitable agroforestry systems to enhance availability of nutritive food,
Generate employment and income to support the efforts of Odisha Government to reduce in-country migration . Assess the impact of introduced interventions on availability of nutritive food to support better decision making for scaling up and scaling out. Build capacity of all stakeholders and strengthen existing/ create structures to sustain the activities and impact of the project.
