Odisha govt decides to promote agro-entrepreneurship in aromatic culture among farmers

New Delhi, July 14 (KNN) The Odisha government has decided to promote agro-entrepreneurship in aromatic culture among farmers, according to media reports.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi and attended by Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Secretary Arun Kumar Panda.

In this regard, Panda assured all technical and knowledge support from Fragrance and Flavour Development Centre (FFDC), an autonomous institution working for development and research in aroma industry.

Further, it was decided in the meeting that a pilot program would be initiated in Ganjam district for assessing the outcome.

Besides, it was targeted to start the first phase pilot program from the month of August 2018 involving around 400 farmers.

On the basis of the outcomes from this pilot project, the program would be extended to other coastal and hilly regions of the state.

Supporting this move, the Chief Secretary directed to provide appropriate support to the farmer’s right from training to cultivation, distillation, quality assessment and marketing linkage within easy access.

Also, Padhi advised FFDC to install common facility centers for distillation and extraction of aroma juice from the crop.

Advising farmers to start with the aroma plants like vetiver, palmarosa, and kerwa, Panda said that marketing tie-up with industries would be made through the support of FFDC under Ministry of MSME and CIMAP, the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.

Estimating the income from aroma farming, experts said that the income from cultivation of one acre of palmarosa would be around Rs 35,000 and the income from vetiver per acre would be around Rs 60,000.