ITC’s initiative promotes rural livelihood, afforestation

Recent expansion ramps up ITC’s presence in Odisha’s entire Malkangiri and Jaypore districts, along with Bastar, Bijapur, Dantewada & Sukma districts in Chhattisgarh

NEW DELHI: Leading Indian conglomerate ITC Limited has expanded the footprint of its highly successful Social and Farm Forestry Initiative in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. This marks another milestone for ITC’s flagship afforestation program, which drives sustainable rural livelihood whilst promoting environmental conservation across 19 districts in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tripura, and Uttarakhand.

The program’s recent expansion ramps up ITC’s presence from five developmental blocks in Odisha’s Malkangiri district to the entire Malkangiri and Jaypore districts, along with Bastar, Bijapur, Dantewada and Sukma districts in Chhattisgarh. The initiative is also being progressively scaled up to other regions. Over the last six years, around 6,000 farmers in the region, many of them tribal, marginal and smallholders, have raised pulpwood plantations on around 20,000 acres of land with support from ITC. The suite of ITC’s interventions ranges from empowering farmers through the transfer of modern agricultural practices, and soil testing, to the supply of sitespecific, highly productive, and disease-resistant clonal saplings of eucalyptus developed by the firm. These saplings are given to farmers at subsidised rates.

The programme has a huge potential going forward. It is estimated that on the project’s maturity, 12,000 acres of renewable pulpwood plantation will be raised annually in the two states, generating Rs 850 million in farmer incomes and creating 5.4 million person-days of employment per annum. The initiative is helping in creating carbon sink, that is, enriching the soil carbon in the region as 15 per cent of the biomass produced in pulpwood plantations is recycled into the soil.

Commenting on the development,Vadiraj Kulkarni, Divisional Chief Executive, Paperboards & Specialty Papers Business, ITC Limited, “We have expanded the Social and Farm Forestry Initiative in Odisha and Chhattisgarh keeping in view the upcoming expansion of our pulp mill capacity in Bhadrachalam, Telangana. The initiative will not only help in establishing a large-scale and sustainable forestry value chain for our Paperboards Business but will also create sustainable livelihood opportunities for thousands of farmers.”