Kailali. The agriculture area of Rani Jamara Kularia Irrigation Project has been expanded to seven local levels including Ghodaghodi and Bhajani municipalities, Joshipur rural municipality and Bardagoria rural municipality.

Bharat Prasad Kandel, chief of the Agriculture Program Implementation Unit, said that the third phase of the program is being implemented with the loan assistance of the World Bank. Irrigation facility will be provided in 18,000 hectares under this programme.

With the implementation of the project, progress has been made in electricity growth. Improved seeds are being exported to 14 districts of the country from Tikapur area, while banana cultivation is being done in 450 hectares of land in Tikapur with the help of the project to expand banana cultivation.

Farmers have been made self-reliant through vegetable cultivation. Kandel said that the project is working on the expansion of spring maize cultivation while mechanization is helping to attract farmers to modern agriculture.

In the third phase of the project, preparations have been made to support the farmers by giving more priority to the expansion of chaite paddy, spring maize production and potato production. The project believes that the production of Chaite paddy is encouraging and the project will provide access to irrigation.

Similarly, the project has focused on making farmers self-reliant in livestock feed by emphasizing on maize production, while the project plans to promote potato cultivation as a strategic crop, kandel said. A cold storage capacity of 1,000 metric tonnes has been constructed to store agricultural produce. The third phase of the programme will run till 2031.