Apiculture Mission launched
SHILLONG: The Department of Commerce & Industries, in partnership with the MIE, Shillong, launched the State Apiculture Mission under the aegis of the Integrated Basin development and Livelihood Promotion Programme (IBDLP) on Thursday.
The Apiculture Mission has been initiated across the State in a convergent mode with the Department of Commerce and Industries and the Mission has been designed to spur initiatives integrative with Meghalaya’s biophysical attributes to confer livelihood improvement through gainful employment of the local populace.
It was conceived as a mission-mode apiculture development strategy underpinned by intensified honey production, domain expansion of honey product development, creation of market linkages for profitable marketing of honey and honey products and community engagement for creating an effective and sustainable income source through infrastructural and human capacity development.
Technical assistance along with innovative financing and market linkages under institutionalized management are the key vehicles for implementing the strategy for up scaling and promoting apiculture as an organized enterprise.
Through this Mission, the Government hopes that over a period of 5 to 7 years, 50,000 farmers will be involved who will raise a minimum of five bee colonies each. Thus the mission will be raising 2,50,000 bee colonies and producing 2000 MT of honey.
Over the next six to eight months it is anticipated that 2700 beekeepers would be involved in the mission with a minimum of 15,000 hives and a production of 120 MT of honey.
Inaugurating the Apiculture Mission, Chief Minister Mukul Sangma said, “Through hard work we can effectively contribute to the prosperity of the State and the nation. We are expressing this desire through is Mission.”
“Our objective is to sincerely create an environment where every family in the State will be capable of having earnings which can be commensurate to the needs of the family to grow,” he added.
He also commented on the minimal success of State and Central initiatives that have been doled out over the years and how their impacts have only just trickled down to the common man or even missed them altogether.
Sangma further explained that honey was indeed a product that needed to be invested in as it would provide bee keepers with a livelihood that was sufficient and sustainable. He also spoke keenly on the medicinal value of honey.
He was excited at the thought of being able to tap this medicinal property of honey and thus increasing its commercial value. This in itself would be enough to motivate the Government and entrepreneurs to invest in honest and make it “the best honey in the world.”
Earlier, Chief Secretary P.B.O. Warjri was cautious in warning bee keepers to dissuade people and especially farmers around them to “abstain from using pesticides in their fields as this was proving to be fatal to bees in the State”.
He urged them to persuade farmers to use organic methods of fertilization. This was not only a healthier method of farming but it would also protect the environment and bees from the fatal use of toxic pesticides, he said.
Home Minister Roshan Warjri spoke on “preservation of the environment and uplifting the economic activities of people in the State as a whole.”
She spoke briefly on the medicinal property of honey and cited “people in other cities would always ask me to bring a bottle of honey from Meghalaya for them when I was visiting the city; this is an example of how popular the honey in Meghalaya is in the country.”
Commissioner and Secretary P. Jain stated that the core beliefs of the Apiculture mission is in synergy with that of the IBDLP programme in that “each family must have at least three livelihoods.”
Bee keeping, as Jain observed, has “always been taken up more as a hobby than a livelihood.”
“By training our local bee keepers behind the science of bee keeping, honey cultivation can become an enterprise that can run in tandem with other sources of livelihoods,” Jain added.
The programme concluded with the Chief Minister presenting beekeeping kits to 21 Master Beekeepers of Khadarshnong village. He also presented a memento to Prof. L.R. Verma for his contribution to beekeeping in Meghalaya.