Centre says, 75 nutrition smart villages will strengthen India's campaign against malnutrition

Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday announced the "Nutrition Smart Village" programme to reach out to 75 villages across India with the objective of promoting nutritional awareness, education and behavioural change in rural areas.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the objectives of the initiative are promoting nutritional awareness, education and behavioural change in rural areas involving farm women and school children, harnessing traditional knowledge through the local recipe to overcome malnutrition and implementing nutrition-sensitive agriculture through homestead agriculture and Nutri-garden.

The objectives of the programme would be achieved through the network of All India Coordinated Research Project on Women in Agriculture (AICRP-WIA) which is in operation at 13 centres in 12 States of India besides the coordinating institute located at Bhubaneswar.

"The initiative has been undertaken in line with the Prime Minister's call to all the academicians, agricultural scientists and all the institutions to adopt and transform 75 villages. Under the initiative, a total of 75 villages will be adopted by AICRP centres and ICAR-CIWA, for which the AICRP centres will adopt 5 villages each with the remaining to be adopted by ICAR-CIWA with an aim to develop 75 Nutri-Smart villages," the statement said.

"To achieve the goal of Malnutrition free villages, intensive awareness campaigns and field activities will be undertaken for focusing on the concept of Nutri-village/ Nutri-food/ Nutri-diet/ Nutri-thali etc. for strengthening the Poshan Abhiyan. Awareness among the women farmers will also be created about their legal rights in all walks of life. The products/ tools/ technologies developed by AICRP centres will be evaluated through multi-location trials," it added.

(ANI)

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