The Agriculture Department will distribute vegetable seeds through schools as part of a comprehensive project for promoting vegetable cultivation in the district.
Six types of vegetable seeds will be distributed for cultivation on the premises of houses and 1.2 lakh kits are ready for distribution to the students. An official of the Agriculture Department said that the project is implemented with the aim to complete the distribution of seeds by July 31. The project will benefit 489 government, aided and unaided schools in addition to the selected CBSE and private educational institutions.
Prior to it, 10,000 kits containing cool season vegetable seeds will be distributed to educational institutions under the Devikulam educational sub-district and the lists of schools have been prepared with priority given to higher secondary, high school, upper primary and lower primary sections in that order, he said.
The department is also implementing programmes to promote vegetable cultivation on the premises of intuitions. This is with the aim to select 140 educational institutions which have at least 10 cents of land congenial for cultivation. Seeds, fertilisers and irrigation equipment worth Rs 2,500 will be given to the institutions. The department also plans to form district-level farm cluster units for promoting vegetable farming and financial support will also be given to them, he said.