ICAR – Central Institute for Women in Agriculture (CIWA) established a custom hiring centre (CHC) at Kadua village, Satyabadi Block of Puri District for socio-economic upliftment of scheduled caste (SC) women farmers. The CHC was formally inaugurated by Dr. Mridula Devi, Director, ICAR – CIWA, Bhubaneswar on 18th May, 2023 under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) component of the institute. About 60 women were attended the programme. A memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was signed with SC members of “Prativa Sanchaya Samiti” for the established CHC.

In the inaugural speech, Dr. Mridula Devi stated that the CHC is the evolving concept and holds an immense potential to change both pre harvest and post harvest landscape in India. The centre will be very much beneficial for the given SHG that would enable them to use processing equipments like mini rice mill-cum-pulveriser, groundnut decorticator, spice grinder for primary and secondary value added products such as wheat based powdered nutri-mix product which is an attractive product now-a-days in the Anganwadi centre for correcting malnutrition among school children. In addition to this, paddy thresher-cum-winnower and power operated chaff cutter are also given for reducing drudgery and pre-harvest losses in production catchment. She emphasized the importance of packaging and branding of the products for better marketability and thus profitability. CHC is not only for the benefits of SC women but also a facility to other small and marginal farmers in the locality for income generation. Thus, accessibility is very crucial for the livelihood support to those who can’t afford to purchase costly equipments or machines to boost for a better tomorrow through value addition and product development process. The programme was coordinated by Dr. Jyoti Nayak, Principal Scientist (FRM) Dr. Sachidananda Swain, Sr. Scientist (AS&PE) and Mrs. Geeta Saha, Technical Officer .