Bhubaneswar: A World Bank team, along with the Project Director of OIIPCRA and other senior officers, visited the APC Cluster at Maa Kalijai Producer Group in Harichandanpur block today to review the progress of women farmers engaged under the project.
During the interaction, the team enquired about cultivation practices, market linkages, and the economic status of women farmers before and after the implementation of the APC project.
Members of the producer group highlighted that bitter gourd has emerged as their key success crop, cultivated under a cluster approach by 110 women farmers across 70 acres. They have adopted advanced farming practices, including low-cost single-line trellis systems, saplings from soilless nurseries, mulching, and solar borewells with drip irrigation.
Market linkages have been strengthened through the Farmer Producer Company (FPC) promoted under the project, enabling direct marketing of produce to Cuttack, Jajpur, and Bhadrak. While earlier the women farmers earned only ₹6,000–10,000 annually from vegetable farming, most members now report incomes exceeding ₹1 lakh from vegetable cultivation.
Impressed with the remarkable transformation, the World Bank team lauded the initiative and advised other clusters to adopt similar models for achieving higher output with lower input costs.
