A high level team from Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India is going to visit J&K to look into the infrastructure for the overall development of Agriculture and Horticulture sector.This was decided at a high level meeting which was convened under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), Ministry of Agriculture Farmers and Welfare, today at Krishi Bhawan here to discuss the boost in production of Almonds and Walnut of four States including J&K.The meeting was chaired by Rajveer Singh, Joint Secretary MIDH, Ministry of Agriculture Farmers and Welfare.The meeting was also attended by Commissioner Horticulture, B.N.S. Murthy Ministry of Agriculture, Farmers and Welfare GoI , Mission Director from J&K Aijaz A Bhat and Mission Directors from Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand.The main focus in the meeting was to boost the production of almonds and walnut in the concerned states.Regarding J&K the production turnover per year is 6 crore rupees. The meeting was informed that the walnut production is 2.7 lakh MT with area covered 85,000 hectares where as Almond production is 10,000 MT under the area covered 6,000 hectares.
In Jammu province, it was given out, the walnut production is 84356 MT and in Kashmir it is 195066 MT whileas the almond production in Kashmir is 10321 MT while in Jammu province it is 5 MT.Speaking on the occasion, the Joint Secretary asked for the proposals for cluster propagation of 50,000 plants in walnut and almond per year especially for Jammu and Kashmir. During the meeting, it was also decided that a high level team from Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, GoI shall visit J&K for looking into the infrastructure and concerned for the overall development of Agriculture and Horticulture Department.It was also informed that under MIS scheme, apples cultivated in J&K are procured directly from farmers by the government-run National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED).Under this scheme about 55,000 boxes of Apples have been procured till October 3, 2019 which weighs about 711 MT costing about 3.36 crore while benefitting around 500 apple growers.The meeting was also told that the total production during the current year is about 22-24 lakh MT generating 8 crore mandays thus involving 7 lakh families in the sector and covers 1.64 lakh Hectares in J&K.It was also given out that J&K’s Horticulture Department has introduced high density plantation from 2017, and under this category about 200 hectares plantation has been completed till date. In the coming 8 to 10 years the target is to convert 1 lakh hectares into high density plantation, the reason being 8 times more in production than our traditional orchards, the meeting was informed.