UP gets its own agroforestry mission for better land use

Encouraging tree plantation with crops and promoting livestock to improve productivity, employment and income of rural households

ALLAHABAD: To ensure better land use management in the state and help realise PM Narendra Modi’s promise of doubling farmers’ income, Yogi Adityanath government has set up Uttar Pradesh Agroforestry Mission.

Agroforestry is a system in which trees and shrubs are grown around or among crops and pastureland to create diverse, productive, profitable, ecologically sound and sustainable land-use systems.

The move was needed under the national mission for sustainable agriculture guidelines-2014 and mission on agroforestry guidelines-2016.

It has received governor Ram Naik’s nod and would now govern planning and implementation of all agroforestry initiatives in the state.

A missive informing about the composition and responsibilities of various bodies like state agroforestry steering committee, state-level standing technical committee, agroforestry project management unit besides district agroforestry committees that are to be set up under the mission has been sent by chief secretary Rajive Kumar to all concerned officials, a senior official of the state forest and wildlife department said.

The state agroforestry steering committee would be headed by state agriculture commissioner while the state-level standing technical committee would have state’s principal chief conservator of forest as its head.

Similarly, the agroforestry project management unit will have additional principal chief conservator of forest as chairman while the district agroforestry committees would have respective district magistrates heading them.

The missive dated October 25, copies of which has also been sent to union ministries of agriculture and farmers welfare as well as environment, forest and climate change, said the state government plans to create a corpus of ₹10 crore.

The interest from this corpus would be utilized for meeting the initial expenses for implementation of projects.

The prime objectives of the mission includes encouraging and expanding tree plantation in complementarily and integrated manner with crops and livestock to improve productivity, employment, income and livelihoods of rural households, especially the small holder farmers.

The initiatives would also strive to protect and stabilize ecosystems and promote resilient cropping and farming systems to minimize the risk during extreme climatic events.