Horticulture department advocates paradigm shift in agriculture policies

Dimapur, May 9 (EMN): As uncertainty in overcoming the fight against Covid-19 pandemic continue to persist, officials from the Horticulture department have sensitised the farmers in Nagaland to make effort towards attaining self-sufficiency in food production.

Towards this endeavour, Horticulture department had launched a state-wide campaign to create awareness among farmers on the importance of farming in this time of crisis on the theme “Grow more! Produce more! Learn more.”

In continuing with the campaign, a team of officials from horticulture department conducted a consultative meeting with other officials from agri and allied, livelihood departments and KVK Tuensang in the conference hall of Circuit House at Tuensang town on May 8. The team was headed by its additional secretary Zarenthung accompanied by deputy directors namely Y Bongti and Meyasashi.

Speaking at the meeting, Zarenthung has encouraged rejuvenating agri and allied and other livelihood sectors. As the Covid-19 pandemic in India has created shortage of workforce, he has warned of negative impact in the production of food grains. To avoid such catastrophe, he has suggested a paradigm shift in agri and allied policies in order to increase production in Nagaland.

He further suggested undertaking massive empirical data collection from the field with realistic approaches to identify the excess production on varieties of crops in each pockets and earmarking the same for export within the state.

Meyasashi spoke on targeting the off-season production of agriculture products, advancement of the infrastructural and agri export policy. He also highlighted on the government’s effort in development of the storage and linkage of Indian railways, Indigo and Air India for export purposes.

He informed that Indigo and Air India have agreed in principle to help export 2000 kg of perishable items to central India, while the Indian railways have also agreed to carry 36 wagons of non-perishable items twice a week. He added that Nagaland government and the Airport authority at Dimapur have agreed to make Dimapur airport a cargo laden airport. He, however, stated that the problem now lies in generating agricultural items for export in Nagaland.

During the interactive session, the house discussed on channelising the products to markets by regulating standards system of pricing and also on free movement of the employees of the agri and allied and other livelihood departments in the villages and blocks.

The meeting concluded with a common agenda to work harder, target large scale production, plan to export excess production, facilitating marketing linkage, and paradigm shift in the policies.