UP to invest Rs 25 crore to establish village ‘haats’

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Feb 7, 2021

The Uttar Pradesh government is planning to invest Rs 25 crore in setting up rural markets or ‘haats’ to facilitate the spot sale of farm produce at remunerative prices.

The state government will set up 53 village ‘haats’ for the benefit of agricultural and horticultural farmers, and to catalyse its flagship agenda of doubling the farmers’ income, according to government sources.

With the availability of markets near villages, the farmers will be able to buy all farm related items too. It will lead to reduction in the cost of transporting farm produce to distant markets, and thus save a considerable amount of their time and resources, the government feels.

While, the ‘haats’ will facilitate the ready sale of all kinds of farm crops viz. food grains, fruits, vegetables etc, they will also have the provision of robust silos to store food grains and crops.

Recently, Amazon-backed food and grocery retailer More Retail has also evinced interest in setting up farm-centric supermarkets in UP.

Last month, the UP government had launched a mega three-week farmers’ outreach programme titled ‘Kisan Kalyan Mission’ on January 6, which covered all the 75 districts of the state. Under the programme, the government collaborated with progressive farmers, scientists and farming experts to propagate modern and scientific farming methods for cutting down on farm input costs for higher yield and profitability.

There are an estimated 23 million farmers’ households in UP, of which more than 21 million or 90 per cent are small and marginal farmers with fragmented land holdings and subsisting on low farm income.