New Delhi: Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister for Development of North Eastern Region, on Wednesday held discussions on drawing up a strategy for strengthening the agri-horti ecosystem of the North Eastern states to enhance the incomes of farmers.
The minister participated in the high-level task force meeting on agriculture and horticulture, convened by Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang in the national capital. The Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, Agriculture Ministers of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and senior ministry officials also attended the meeting.
The task force deliberated on need for addressing key gaps in the value chain and market linkages across the North-Eastern Region. The discussions focused on strengthening the agri-horti ecosystem by leveraging the region’s inherent strengths, with specialisation, quality, and the ability to stand out as the unique selling proposition of agri-horti products from the North East Region, according to an official statement.
Reducing post-harvest losses and lowering marketing and logistics costs emerged as critical focus areas to enhance overall value realisation for farmers. The meeting also discussed the need to systematically diagnose existing bottlenecks across the production, post-harvest, processing, marketing, and logistics segments of the value chain, while prioritising interventions and designing suitable investment mechanisms.
The importance of charting a clear roadmap that progresses from foundational interventions to full-scale value chain integration was also deliberated upon during the meeting. This includes developing a strategic infrastructure map to support export readiness, recognising priority commodities for each state, and promoting cluster-based development for each identified product to ensure scale, efficiency, and market alignment, the statement said.
A blueprint-based approach was proposed, beginning with the selection of one product and addressing its end-to-end value chain through clearly defined short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans with product-wise targets and investment requirements. The approach also emphasised assessing, for every product, the number of farmers engaged across the North Eastern Region and evaluating how farmers would benefit on a product-wise and state-wise basis. Once these interventions are implemented, the focus would be on measuring the resulting increase in farmers’ incomes, the statement explained.
The task force reaffirmed that a focused, product-specific, and cluster-driven strategy would enable measurable and sustainable outcomes, strengthen market linkages, reduce inefficiencies across the value chain, and ensure long-term income enhancement for farmers across the North Eastern Region, the statement added.
(IANS)
