Operation Green scheme now applicable in 8 states

A central scheme aimed to contain annual price distress of tomatoes, onion and potatoes. The Operation Green aims to promote farmer producers organizations, agri-logistics, processing facilities, and professional management. The idea behind Operation Green is to double the income of farmers by end of 2022. Operation is essentially a price fixation scheme that aims to ensure farmers are given the right price for their produce. The scheme was launched in 2018-19 in Feb in Lok sabha by Mr. Arun Jaitley who proposed that it would be launched with an allocation of Rs 500 crore on the lines of Operation Flood. 

The MSP regulation has a key role to play here. The announcement to set minimum support price of all kharif crops at 1.5 times the cost of production will increase the farmers’ income and for consumers, tax incentives will be given under Operation Green.  The focus is on basic ingredients instead of additional commodities in order to increase demand in economy. In order to promote it Jaitley said that more than 470 agriculture market committee (APMCs) promoted markets will now be connected to e-NAM AND 22000 agriculture markets will be connected. 

Regarding the same the Operation Green has short term and long term components. The budget for short term component allocated Rs 50 crore. Under this budget, government will share 50 per cent cost with the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) for transportation and storage facility of TOP produces. 

This means that if the rate of supplying onion is Rs 3/kg from Nasik to Delhi, the Centre will share Rs 1.5/kg. Currently NAFED supplies around 15,000 tonne of onion from Nasik to Delhi. After using this fund, it can supply up to 0.25 million tonne of onion. 

The budget for long term i.e. 450 crore will be used to develop value chain, cold storage, packaging, sorting, grading and processing industries. The top producing clusters are chosen keeping in mind value chain and processing industries. 17 clusters have been chosen in eight states. 

A senior official close to the development on the condition of anonymity said that farmers group like Farmer Producer Organizations, Farmers Federation, state undertakings or private players will benefit from this scheme as they will get 50 per cent of the total but up to Rs 50 crore. The government will provide 50 per cent value of total project cost, which either would be setting up of processing industries, cold storage or others. The committee suggested extra funds can be pooled in from similar schemes like SAMPADA, an umbrella scheme incorporating ongoing schemes (Mega Food Parks, Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure, Food Safety and Quality Assurance Infrastructure, etc) and also new schemes like Infrastructure for Agro-processing Clusters, Creation of Backward and Forward Linkages, Creation / Expansion of Food Processing & Preservation Capacities.