World Cooperation Economic Forum will collaborate with many organisations including ICAR-Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture to promote the cultivation of exotic horticulture crops in the Himalayan region.
The forum has been set up to strengthen cooperative movement in India.
World Cooperation Economic Forum (WCopEF) will collaborate with various institutions, including the National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI), the ICAR-Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture (CITH), the Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI), and Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences (SKUAST) for this purpose, it said in a statement on Saturday.
The initial focus will be on promoting Hazelnut, Walnut and other exotic crops across 13 Himalayan States/ Union Territories of the country namely Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Assam and West Bengal).
In addition to promoting crop cultivation, these institutions will provide skill training and raise awareness among young people about the various innovative government schemes.
"We at WCopEF are joining forces with esteemed institutions like ICAR-CITH, SKUAST, NCUI, and CNRI to bolster the cooperative movement in the Himalayas and promote the cultivation of hazelnuts, walnuts, and other non-native crops," said Dileep Sanghani, Founder of WCopEF.
He is also Chairman of fertiliser cooperative IFFCO and the President of NCUI.
He was addressing a two-day National Seminar on Horticulture in Srinagar.
CNRI Secretary General Binod Anand said, "Cooperative societies in the Indian Trans Himalayan region need to work closely with the government to encourage farmers to cultivate horticultural crops."
There is a need to ensure that horticultural crops reach big cities as soon as possible, he said.
"Storage and value addition is going to be the key," said Anand, who is also a member of the government-constituted panel on minimum support price (MSP).
