HVAP Press Meet during IMD, 2015
Published By: Admin        on: 2015-12-14

12. December. 2015 | High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP) organized a media interaction on 11.Dec. 2015 at Birendranagar, Surkhet, Nepal to mark and celebrate International Mountain Day (IMD, 2015) through sharing HVAP’s achievements, innovation and lesson learned during the course of intervention on seven high value commodities following value chain development approach . The theme of the mountain day was to promote mountain products and the project cashed the time sharing HVAP’s experience on high value commodities for improving the livelihood of the mountain communities with the media workers and like-minded institutions. There were 47 participants representing local, regional and national level representatives/reporters including district and regional stakeholders and project staff.

During the event, Mr. Krishna Thapa, Monitoring and Evaluation Expert shared overall status, progress and lesson learned of the project. He highlighted that, “the project has been co investing with group/cooperatives and agribusiness company / processing units for implementing 373 sub-projects under seven high value mountain products (Apple, Off season vegetables, Timur, Ginger, Turmeric, Ginger, Goat and vegetable seed) that have benefitted 11,824 rural households and 11 agri-enterprenerus of seven districts. The project has contributed additional net income NRs 18000 / households on average of 11,824 HHs so far through improvising enhanced production, improved productivity, reducing post-harvest loss and better market linkages and marketing practices of seven commodities.

In addition, the institutional capacity of 328 groups/cooperatives has been enhanced besides increased participation of women and  dalit /janajati that accounts  62 % and 32 % of the total beneficaries catered by project intervention. The project has been able to facilitate formal and informal market linkages between the producers and traders/Agribusiness for approximately 8000 MT products including export of 45 MT Ginger and 114 MT of timur to Europe markets.

Media team were very much keen to know about the marketing aspects of the high value products in terms of where it goes, how it channelized, how farmers are linked with the market and more importantly the benefit sharing mechanisms.

•          Giving response to the media team and other stakeholders, Mr. Rajendra Prasad Bhari, Project Manager said that the HVAP project is an absolute form of value chain development and inclusive business (VCD-IB) that has been able to create win-win situation for all the value chain actors from Producers, collectors, processors to traders including consumers, which will more visible as the value chain development proceeds. Similarly, he has illustrated the tools and approaches as Multi Stakeholder Platform (MSP) that brings together value chain stakeholders from producers, inputs suppliers, service providers, Private sector Government, NGOs, Donors, research institutions and civil society and crate linkages and partnerships for improving the situations thereby upgrading and steering the sub-sector/value chain

At last, thanking the media persons for the fruitful discussion, Mr. Rajendra Bhari, Project Manager, HVAP, Mr. Prakas Adhikari, Chairperson of CCI,Surkhet and Ganesh Kanchan Bharati, Chairperson, Federation of Nepalese Journalist (FNJ),Surkhet said, "Media is the vehicle to disseminate any means of activities to a wider audience and we should promote culture of disseminating positive news which could inspire people . They further emphasised on partnering with media for disseminating the news related to HVAP”.

After the sharing presentation, the media team were taken for field observation at 3 major project areas of HVAP. The team visited

·         Timur Green house Nursery constructed under PPP model involving HVAP, CFUG and Dabur Nepal Pvt. LTd. at Bhairamsthan, Surkhet with 50 000 timur saplings production capacity.

·         Bhattarai Masala Udhyaog, Jarbuta, Surkhet a Turmeric Processing unit for making turmeric powder and additionally  doing socially responsible business with the rural community of Surkhet, Jajarkot and Dailekh.

·          Hariyo HiraVegetable Collection Center, Uttarganga, Surkhet managed by Hariyo Hira NTFPs and Agriculture Cooperative, that has been  trading 30 Quintal cabbage /cauliflower per day as per the contractual agreement made with 7 wholesale vegetable Mandis of Surkhet, facilitated by HVAP.   

As per their field observation and collected information, the team has published news on local and national level newspaper, broadcasted on local and national level television and aired by radio Nepal and local FMs.