The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoA&FW), Government of India announced the Revised Cluster Development Programme (CDP) on 31-Dec-2024. CDP is a central sector programme implemented by the National Horticulture Board. The Programme aims to achieve holistic growth and development of horticulture clusters to make them globally competitive.
CDP is designed as a central sector scheme to leverage geographical specialisations of horticulture clusters and promote integrated and market-led development of pre-production, production, post-harvest, logistics, branding and marketing activities.
Based on the learning, output, and outcome of the pilot implementation, the revised guidelines have been issued for the next stage of the Cluster Development Programme.
The cluster development approach will facilitate the horticulture sector in realising suitable economies of scale in production and post-harvest activities. It is also expected to help in better price realisation and empowerment of the farming community by enhancing their income through increased competitiveness across the entire value chain.
The revised approach of developing crop specific clusters in different agro climatic zones of the country would also help in dealing with various supply issues like high quality planting material, soil health management, adoption of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and innovative technologies to promote market led production apart from addressing the gap in information sharing on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) issues for export markets.
The cluster-based approach is expected to address the concerns and common challenges of all the stakeholders in a cluster. While individuals and institutions within a cluster will compete, they are also expected to collaborate and complement each other to function as an optimally aggregated group, optimising resources and achieving the desired impact through focused interventions.
