Bhubaneswar, April 9: Feel free to add more greens to your diet.

Residents will now get local vegetables much more easily, as a large number of farmers are registering with the vegetable initiative for urban cluster under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikash Yojna.

The scheme aims to buy vegetables directly from farmers by eliminating middlemen. It also provides subsidy to farmers for growing vegetables. The initiative is part of a scheme sponsored by the central government.

Sources said vegetables would be procured from five districts — Cuttack, Jajpur, Puri, Khurda and Nayagarh — to be sold in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. The area has been designated as the Bhubaneswar cluster.

Data available with the state directorate of horticulture revealed that 561 groups with more than 8,800 farmers in Cuttack, Jajpur, Puri, Khurda and Nayagarh have registered with the initiative. The programme aims to include 11,000 farmers under 561 registered groups.

“The programme was to be first implemented in four districts. But looking at the demand, Nayagarh was also included under the programme,” said deputy director of horticulture S.B. Das.

Under the programme, the state government will ensure that vegetables grown by these farmers reach the urban areas of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar through proper marketing and cold storage facilities.

The city requires nearly 380 metric tonnes of vegetable every day, but locally grown vegetables only manage to fulfil around 30 per cent of the demand. The city depends on adjoining areas of Balakati, Nayagada, Balianta, Barang and Kakatpur for vegetables. The gap between demand and supply leads to import of vegetables from neighbouring states of Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand.

It is common for middlemen to get involved in the process of procurement of vegetables and transporting them to the city leading to price escalation. Lack of proper cold storage facilities is also a major concern.

To overcome this, the directorate of horticulture had assigned the job of procurement to a private agency, which will procure the vegetables from registered farmers and transport them in specially designed cold storage vehicles. As of now, 14 aggregation centres (collection points) have been set up for the Bhubaneswar cluster.

Under the initiative, farmers will be provided subsidy for vegetable cultivation. The directorate has already received a central grant of Rs 12 crore for the Bhubaneswar cluster for 2011-12 and another Rs 12 crore for 2012-13, which includes a similar programme covering Sambalpur, Rourkela and Berhampur clusters.

To facilitate the marketing of the vegetables procured from the registered farmers, the directorate has set up eight kiosks called Udyan Fresh in the city. The directorate has proposed another 22 such kiosks in the city.

Sources in the directorate said also planned to supply vegetables to small vendors at various sales points on the route via refrigerated vans.