Patna: Less than a month after deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who heads the environment and forest department, announced the government's intention to have an agro-forestry policy in place, the department has started work on setting up a committee that would formulate the policy.

Modi had made this announcement on December 19 last year.

"We have sent the names of experts and senior officials, whom we want to keep in the committee, for the approval of the government and as soon as it comes, the committee will start working on the policy document," a senior official of the environment and forest department told The Telegraph.

He added that the committee was likely to take around three months to complete the comprehensive document, which would be the first-of-its-kind in Bihar. "We expect government approval for the committee this month and so the policy document should be ready by April," said the official.

The development assumes significance as Bihar has been laying special emphasis on promoting agro-forestry to add to its green cover on one hand and to add to farmers' income by diverse use of farm land on the other.

Agro-forestry means use of part of agricultural land for planting particular varieties of trees, which give good economic returns to farmers in four to five years.

Bihar aims to plant 3.8 crore plants of other species and 1.5 crore of poplar species plants in five years under its agro-forestry scheme. The state has been laying special emphasis on this scheme for the past four years.

In 2013-14, 71.06 lakh trees were planted under this scheme and the number went up to 1.03 crore in 2014-15. In 2015-16 and 2016-17, 95.17 lakh and 94.63 lakh trees were planted respectively on the fields of Bihar farmers under the project.

Selection of tree species was done under this project in such a fashion that farmers could get economic benefits from the planted trees in four to five years and special emphasis was laid on planting poplar, shisham, kadamb and semal trees among other species.

Bihar has about 15 per cent of its area, 94,163sq km of total area, under green cover and this percentage stood at 9.79 per cent in 2011. The state now aims to increase the green cover area percentage to 17 through the agro-forestry scheme.

The government is also developing a timber market for farmers in Hajipur using which they would be able to get a platform to sell trees planted under the agro-forestry scheme. The market is likely to become functional by March this year.