Bhubaneswar: The state government has set a target to cover around 5.26 lakh hectare land spreading over 705 micro-watersheds under the proposed Rejuvenating Watershed for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development (Reward) project over a period of six years.
Chaired by Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra, a high-level meeting held virtually from the Lok Seva Bhawan here Sunday outlined the modalities of the programme.
Official sources said that a target was set to cover a total of around 5.26 lakh hectare of land spreading over 705 micro- watersheds under the proposed Reward project. “Around 1.15 lakh hectare of land under 152 micro-watershed units in five pilot districts—Koraput, Nayagarh, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Sambalpur— would be taken up in the first phase. Besides, around 4.11 lakh hectare of land in seven districts covering about 533 micro-watershed units would be covered both for pilot intervention and intensive agriculture. These seven districts included Nabarangpur and Sundargarh in addition to above five districts,” said a source.
The expected ecological outcomes of the project include prevention of soil run-off, regeneration of natural vegetation, rain water harvesting and recharging of the ground water table. This would enable multi-cropping and adoption of diverse agro-based activities for providing sustainable livelihoods to the people in the watershed area.
Mahapatra directed to focus enhancing productivity and opening up new sustainable livelihood opportunities for increasing the net income of the farmers.
The Chief Secretary also directed treating the watershed and adjacent areas on saturation mode through adoption of new technology and data-driven approaches.
Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment Secretary Suresh Kumar Vashishth, who also took part in the meeting, said that the programme would positively promote resource efficient growth in watershed areas, investment in human capital and developing networks of scientific and technical partners.
Describing Odisha is a forerunner in watershed management, Pritee Kumar of the World Bank said that the proposed programme would be helpful in making the watersheds ‘climate resilient through land resource inventory, land use planning, and precision farming in the context of the specific agro-ecological conditions’.
The project would directly address key strategic actions around increasing farmers’ income, more crops per drop of water, water to every plot and soil health. It would also focus on promotion of entrepreneurship through technical and financial support.
Odisha is one of three states in the country to have planned for such an ambitious programme. The other two states are Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
According to sources, the approximate cost of the project was estimated around 211.57 million dollar out of which state and Centre would provide around 162.57 million dollar through convergence of different scheme and, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) of the World Bank would provide 49 million dollar as loan.
PNN