8-Dec-2018: Maharashtra Government launches World Bank assisted State of Maharashtra’s Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (SMART) Project to transform rural Maharashtra.
Maharashtra Village Social Transformation Foundation (MVSTF), Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission (MSRLM), and Maharashtra Agricultural Competitiveness Project (MACP) intend to collaboratively formulate and implement a state of Maharashtra Agribusiness and Rural Transformation -“SMART” Livelihood Project for Rural Maharashtra.
The project aims to transform Rural Maharashtra through “SMART” interventions in Agriculture and Livelihood sectors, assisted by World Bank. Over the years, Government of Maharashtra has been consistently putting efforts and resources through various central and state government schemes, programs and projects for development and transformation of agriculture and rural sectors and actively seeking private sector participation in these initiatives.
SMART Goal: The goal of the project is to enhance the enterprise formation, increasing access to markets; and promoting climate resilience and resource-use efficiency.
SMART Objective:
- Support value addition in the post-harvest segments of agriculture value-chains;
- Facilitate agribusiness investments through inclusive business models that provide opportunities to small farmers;
- Stimulate the establishment of small and medium enterprises; and
- Support resilience of agriculture production systems to better manage increasing production and commercial risks associated with climate change.
Systemic and Transformational Impact:
- Building institutional capacity to leverage private sector financing and technical expertise in project focus areas.
- Developing private sector stakeholder consortiums to coordinate actions and scale up private investments into agribusiness and allied sectors.
- Convergence of relevant government schemes in enterprise promotion, water management, skills training and Agri-support toward outcome-based approach.
- Enhance capacity of the implementing entities, producer collectives, enterprises and other value chain participants for coordinated action.
- Improve market reforms enabling competitiveness and Increased farmers participation.
- Collaborate public and private sectors leading to income enhancement.
- Empower women enterprises towards economic and livelihood development.
10-May-2018: Rythu Bandhu Scheme: Telangana government launches investment support scheme for farmers.
The “Agriculture Investment Support Scheme” (Rythu Bandhu), the first cash transfer scheme for farmers, introduced by the Telangana State government. Rythu Bandhu literally means ‘Friend of Farmer’. The objective this scheme is two-fold: first, to provide a timely cash grant for initial investment needs of farmers, and second, to ensure that farmers do not fall into the debt trap.
The scheme provides a grant of ₹5000 per acre per farmer each season for the purchase of inputs like seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, labour and other investments in the field operations of farmer’s choice for the crop season.
30-Oct-2018: Odisha launches 'Soura Jalanidhi' scheme
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik launched the Soura Jalanidhi scheme that aims to increase use of solar energy for helping farmers in irrigating their land. 'Soura Jalanidhi', is a dug well based solar pump irrigation system in convergence mode. Under the scheme, 5,000 solar pumps will be given to Odisha farmers at a subsidy of 90 per cent to irrigate 2,500 acres of land.
The chief minister also launched the web portal of this scheme on the occasion. In the first phase, the facility will be available for farmers where electricity is not available for operating pump sets.
The solar pumps will be given to the beneficiary farmers at a subsidy of 90 per cent. A total of Rs 27 crore will be spent for the programme. Farmers having valid farmer-id, belonging to small and marginal categories having minimum 0.5 acre cultivable land holding and a dug well will be covered under the programme.