Orange festival to ensure its market

Chitwan / Jan 1: Orange festival is being organised at Ichchhakamana rural municipality of Chitwan from today.
The three-day festival being organised with an objective of ensuring market of orange incorporating Tokdand, Dhap, Majhgaun, Sirangaun and Dode villages of the rural municipality. A large quantity of orange is produced in these villages.

Chairperson of Ichchhakamana rural municipality, Dan Bahadur Gurung, shared that the orange festival is going to be organised for the first time with on objective of ensuring market orange produced by local farmers and its promotion.

“We have made arrangement where festival visitor can pick and eat orange by climbing tree”, he added. Similarly, orange eating contest would also be organised in the festival.

Chair Gurung said orange would be kept at a discounted price as compared to market in the festival as well as different materials would be distributed to orange farmers and a training would also be imparted to farmers by agriculture technicians.

“We are organising the festival with a belief that it will be easy to sell orange produced in Ichchhakamana rural municipality at different markets of the country as well as it will help for the publicity of tourism sites of the area”, he mentioned.
It is estimated that more than 450 farmers of Ichchhamana rural municipality would sell orange worth Rs 100 million this year.

Farmers are now selling orange at Rs 75-90 per kg from their farms. Orange is cultivated on 80 hectares of land in the rural municipality this year, according to the Agriculture Development Section of the rural municipality.

A total of 1650 metric tonnes of orange was produced in the rural municipality last year. RSS