HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, Dec 20: The Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) organized an awareness conference on ‘Export Development of High Value Fruits and Vegetables from Arunachal Pradesh’ at Pasighat on Wednesday.
The conference was organized by ICC with support from the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) under the Union ministry of commerce in association with the Arunachal Pradesh government.
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Md Ashraf Kamal from APEDA explained to participants about the numerous subsidy linked schemes of the organization. He said that APEDA gives subsidy for mainly three purposes, namely infrastructure development, quality development and marketing development.
“Infrastructure development comprises of integrated pack house, refrigerated vans and food processing machinery. On the other hand quality development helps the exporters in getting subsidy for different certificates like NPOP, GAP and the laboratory testing etc,” said Md Ashraf Kamal
He also informed about the various marketing assistance given by APEDA like, participation in national and international buyer-seller meets, national and international exhibitions etc. He also informed the crowd that APEDA is establishing a food testing laboratory in collaboration with Assam Agricultural University in Guwahati.
Opang Moy, district agriculture officer informed that the state is providing an enabling ecosystem for growth and investment in horticulture sector.
“Through implementation of flagship programmes like Atma Nirbhar Bagwani and Plantation Yojana and other CSS schemes, area expansions of horticulture crops are being taken up to improve the production capacity of the state . The state is a major contributor to the country’s kiwi and large cardamom productions. In recent years farmers of the state have taken high value crops like walnut, persimmon and avocado,” Opang Moy said.
He stressed upon extension programs on marketing aspects on a sustained basis, need based training to farmers, entrepreneurs and holistic development of all crucial components of horticulture value chain.
East Siang district horticulture department AR Ering said, “The time has come to make a roadmap for developing the state in the horticulture arena. Frmers should buy good quality planting material only from certified sources. Farmers should adopt science based cultivation for better quality to capture the global market”
Eringh also urged the farmers to find out the cost benefit ratio before going for any cultivation. She mentioned that Arunachal Pradesh has become the highest Kiwi producing state in the country.
Takali Tamuk of Kishan Morcha said that the central government has formed the FPO and FPCs after much deliberation, but very few of them are following the government norms, resulting in failure.
Ojim Menju of Pasighat Organic Producer Company said that that the international marketing needs a lot of certifications for which the Arunachal Pradesh government has empanelled a lot of agencies. Now the farmers need to follow these guidelines to make their ventures a success.
