The purpose of this programme is to secure sustainable cultivation throughout the year along with higher production of agricultural products. Providing nutritional supplement to rural women, children in particular through vegetable cultivation, kitchen gardening and, multi-layer farming are the approach for intervention. JGVK has developed a 3 hectare experimental cum demonstration; training farm. It aims at developing of village level model farm. Till now 1600 farmers got trained in organic farming, new varieties of crops and cropping, production of organic fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides and many of them are now engaged in environmental friendly agricultural practice. These initiatives were supported from Tips fund, Denmark.
In the coming period JGVK plans to (1) provide scientific inputs to the farmers e.g. soil testing and prescribe method of cropping practice (ii) institutionalize the 'Farmers field school concept' and its practice beyond JGVK, (iii) establish functional collaboration with government departments and research institutions, national and international experts (iv) processing of crops like sugarcane, maize, vegetables (v) Demonstration farm will be better organized in term of crop planning, experiment of introducing new crops, better documentation, training and extension (vi) sale / marketing of organic products (vii) access to a quality tag of JGVKs organic products.
The Floating Garden project has been started with support from GoWB (Deptt of Biotechnology) from 2017 and its proposed period is of 3 years. The project aims at ensuring food security of poor coastal community through optimal utilization of the pond/water body that they have at their homestead land. Kolmi/water spinach (Ipomoea aquatic) has been successfully grown in floating garden at JGVK I completely organic manner soilless medium.
A poly house farm has been sat up on 1000 skm area of land within JGVK campus in PPP model with 50% support from Govt. of West Bengal and 50 % from JGVK itself. The farm serves as a demonstration land for local farmers to grow cash vegetables like spinach, various capsicum, chilli, pakchoi, broccoli, coriander, lettuce, cabbage etc. with controlled temperature, water and fertilizer.