SHILLONG: A meeting was organized by mushroom farmers to plan the commercial mushroom production to commence for the initial period of October and November before the harvesting of paddy.
The farmers who are interested to grow mushrooms in Umling block of Eco-Friendly Integrated Livelihood Mission (E-FILM) villages are more than hundred in number, but the meeting was attended by only 13 farmer participants.
In the meeting the book written by Pranjal Baruah on mushroom cultivation and the farmers to integrate their produce and to do business ‘Ka jingtip ia ka Jingim’ was given for free free. Few packets of mushroom spawn were also provided to the farmers.
In the commercialization process, as according to their capacity among the 13 farmers, it was found that they are in a position to produce about 1500 mushroom bags approximately producing mushroom worth of Rs 3,00,000 in two months. Their total financial requirement for starting up with these 1500 bags is approx Rs 34000 as they will need to buy paddy straw.
The meeting decided that all the farmers interested in joining this mushroom commercial production process should come and register in the MDF E-FILM office at Nongpoh, behind Indian Bank on or before September 30.
The objective of E-FILM is to integrate the products produced by the farmers by forming Farmer Producer Groups (FPO) to negotiate better price of their produce to attain sustainable growth.
