Department of Horticulture and Food Processing, Government of Uttarakhand

Start with the scheme that fits your activity

• Post-harvest, cold storage or marketing infrastructure: the post-harvest assistance is built for capital facilities and is linked to a bank loan.
• Bee colonies, hives or beekeeping equipment: the beekeeping scheme, which has its own application format.
• Setting up, upgrading or modernising a food processing unit: the State Food Processing Scheme. Micro food units can also look at the PM Formalization scheme.
• Seeds, plants or bio-pesticides: the reverse-migrant scheme, if your situation matches the group it names.

Check that a call is open

• The post-harvest advertisement on the site covers 2017-18. Ask the district horticulture office whether a current call exists before you prepare a file.
• The food processing government order is dated 2017. Confirm the current norms with the department first.

Get the bank step started early

• The post-harvest assistance depends on a loan sanctioned by a nationalised or scheduled commercial bank. Get that sanction before you apply, since the application must carry it.
• Apply on the prescribed format and attach all the required records.

How selection works

• The pages do not describe how applications are assessed or selected, so ask the district horticulture office before you apply.

The Department of Horticulture and Food Processing is a Government of Uttarakhand department that supports horticulture across the state. Its own pages describe a shift from area expansion towards post-harvest management, marketing and food processing, and its scheme information is published on its own website and on the State Horticulture Mission website.

Schemes on the department's pages

The department's schemes page describes the Horticulture Mission for North East and Himalayan States, a centrally sponsored scheme implemented since 2003–04 for horticultural development through a cluster approach. A 2017-18 advertisement under that mission reference invited project proposals for mushroom production, post-harvest management and marketing infrastructure.

The post-harvest assistance in that advertisement is a bank-linked capital subsidy for pack houses, integrated pack houses, cold storage, ripening chambers and pre-cooling units. It also supports a farmer producer organisation of 500 farmers in each district. The State Horticulture Mission site lists the advertisement among its application formats, but the advertisement itself covers 2017-18, so the pages do not show an open call now.

Beekeeping assistance is a state scheme that appears on the State Horticulture Mission's DBT list. It covers bee colony production, colonies, hives and equipment at 40% of cost, with limits per beneficiary. The department also sets up Madhugram beekeeping clusters at each Nyay Panchayat for farmers, youth and landless individuals.

Two food processing schemes are listed as well. The State Food Processing Scheme covers the establishment, upgradation and modernisation of food processing industries, and its government order is dated 30 January 2017. The PM Formalization of Micro Food Processing Enterprises scheme is a central scheme that the department lists, giving micro food industries a 35% subsidy subject to a ceiling under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

The department also lists the Mukhyamantri Ekikrat Bagwani Vikas Yojana, launched during COVID-19 to help reverse migrants through horticulture, with a 50–60% subsidy on seeds, plants and bio-pesticides. The home page links an online registration form for a small polyhouse scheme, but the pages do not state its benefits or eligibility.

The site also describes a horticulture project assisted by the Japan International Co-operation Agency, covering Tehri, Uttarkashi, Nainital and Pithoragarh.

Who can apply

Eligibility depends on the scheme, and the pages give full criteria for few of them. The 2017-18 advertisement addressed farmers and entrepreneurs. The beekeeping scheme is open to farmers, youth and landless individuals through Madhugram, and the COVID-era scheme is for reverse migrants. For the State Food Processing Scheme, the detailed norms are in its government order.

Who runs it

The department's home page gives its name as the Department of Horticulture and Food Processing, Government of Uttarakhand. The State Horticulture Mission website, which hosts many of the scheme forms and notices, names the State Horticulture Mission as the owner of its content. The pages do not explain how the two bodies relate.