Context

Over 49 companies including the Tata Group, Amazon, ITC, and Patanjali, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Maharashtra’s government for SMART initiative.

About

• SMART stands for ‘State of Maharashtra’s Agribusiness and Rural Transformation’ project.
• Purpose: To revamp the agricultural value chain and improve the price realisation for the farmer.
• It is assisted by World Bank, while Confederation of Indian Industry is the industry partner.
• It entails an investment of ?2,000 crore, of which World Bank contributed ?1,500 crore while the State government contributed ?430 crore.
• The balance ?70 crore was raised by Village Social Transformation Foundation (VSTF) through its partners.
• The VSTF has signed MoUs with 22 corporates and start-ups to focus on increasing farm productivity and higher price realisations for farmers by ensuring direct tie-up with end buyers.
• The project, which is being undertaken on a mammoth scale, will cover almost one-fourth of Maharashtra.

Significance

SMART will help support value addition in post-harvest segments of value chains, facilitate enterprise promotion, and business investment for community-based organizations, and will lead to transformation in agriculture.

Other initiatives by Maharashtra for agriculture reforms: The agriculture reforms had begun with anti-drought mitigation reforms in 2014. Jalyukt Shivar: Under this flagship project, almost five lakh water conservation projects have been completed under in 16,480 villages. The target is to cover 25,000 villages. Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture (PoCRA): It is undertaken to enhance climate?resilience and profitability of smallholder farming systems in selected districts of Maharashtra. This project is also funded by World Bank.