Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries last week be­gan dis­trib­ut­ing tree crops un­der the Biore­ach Project, ad­vanc­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to pro­mote sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, cli­mate re­silience and food se­cu­ri­ty.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny was held at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

Un­der the pro­gramme, farm­ers will re­ceive high-qual­i­ty av­o­ca­do and co­conut plants pro­duced to sup­port agroe­co­log­i­cal land restora­tion and bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion.

Speak­ing at the event, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as a prac­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tion aimed at de­liv­er­ing di­rect sup­port to farm­ers, while ad­dress­ing key chal­lenges such as cli­mate vari­abil­i­ty, land degra­da­tion and de­clin­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty.

The na­tion­al project is sup­port­ed by the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty and is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in part­ner­ship with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, NAMDE­V­CO and the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions, un­der the min­istry’s over­sight.

The min­is­ter ex­plained that the dis­tri­b­u­tion falls un­der the agroe­col­o­gy com­po­nent of the project, with plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al prop­a­gat­ed by NAMDE­V­CO and the min­istry’s Agri-Ser­vices Di­vi­sion at the La Réu­nion Plant Prop­a­ga­tion Cen­tre.

He said av­o­ca­dos and co­conut were strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ed for their role in di­ver­si­fied farm­ing sys­tems, long-term in­come gen­er­a­tion and agro­forestry de­vel­op­ment. Tree crops, he not­ed, im­prove soil health, re­duce ero­sion, en­hance wa­ter re­ten­tion and sup­port cli­mate-re­silient farm­ing while con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty.

Rati­ram added that farm­ers will con­tin­ue to re­ceive tech­ni­cal sup­port to en­sure the suc­cess­ful es­tab­lish­ment of the crops. He al­so com­mend­ed farmer groups and as­so­ci­a­tions for their par­tic­i­pa­tion, em­pha­sis­ing the project’s fo­cus on in­clu­sive en­gage­ment and sus­tain­able liveli­hoods.