Operation Greens Scheme: 50% Air Subsidy to North Eastern and Himalayan States

On November 11, 2020, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries announced that a 50% transport subsidy is being provided to 41 notified fruits and vegetables from the Himalayan and the North Eastern states.

Key Highlights

Earlier, these notified fruits and vegetables were provided with rail subsidies under the Kisan Rail Scheme. This is being done after UDAN scheme has developed significant number of airports in these regions.

Operation Greens

This was launched in 2018. Operation Greens is a price fixation scheme that makes sure if farmers are provided with right price for their produce. The scheme aims to promote processing facilities, Farmer Producer Organizations and professional management of agri-produce. It mainly focuses on tomatoes, onions and potatoes by connecting farmers and consumers.

Objectives of Operation Greens

• It enhances value realization of TOP farmers by strengthening Farmer Producing Organizations.
• It assures Price Stabilisation for consumers and producers by proper planning TOP clusters.
• It intends to reduce post-harvest losses. This is to be achieved by creating farm gate infrastructure, creating appropriate storage capacity linking consumption centres.
• The scheme aims to increase food processing capacities by linking production clusters
• Market Intelligence Networks are to be set up to collect and collate real time data.

Two main Strategies of Operation Greens

The Operation Greens is to achieve the above objectives through Short Term Price Stabilisation measures and through Long term Integrated value chain development projects.

Kisan Rail Scheme

The scheme was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman during her Budget 2020-21. The Kisan Rail scheme will transport agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables. Under the scheme, trains with frozen containers are to be launched to build cold supply chain of fish, perishables, milk and meat.

UDAN scheme

It is Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik. It is a Regional connectivity Scheme. The main objective of the scheme is to let the common citizens of the country fly by making the air transport affordable and by increasing the air transport infrastructure.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2020