SHILLONG: It was a year of missions for Meghalaya with the government launching several livelihood schemes under the Agriculture and Horticulture and Fisheries departments.
In April, the Lakadong Mission document was launched by then governor Ganga Prasad. The mission aims to harness the potential of Lakadong turmeric by setting a production target of 50,000 MT over a period of five years.
With the launch, the state government is looking at area expansion from 6,367 acres (2,577 hectare) to 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) to increase productivity to 8 MT per hectare.
Having curcumin content of 7.4 per cent, Lakadong turmeric is dubbed as the finest variety of turmeric in the world.
Coming to May, the East Khasi Hills District Horticulture Officer organised the World Honey Bee Day. The government stressed to establish the Meghalaya Honey Bee Board that will be entrusted to implement the Honey Mission, which is not yet launched.
Next, it was the turn of ‘the humble Jack-with a large heart’ — the jackfruit. The Jackfruit Mission was launched on July. Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma released the draft policy document for the mission.
The first state-level Jackfruit Festival of Meghalaya organised by the Department of Agriculture on was under the theme “humble Jack-with a large heart”.
The Jackfruit Mission will seek to an investment of about Rs 80 crore over a period of five years.
The Mission is set to make impact on 82,000 farmers who will create about 50 small and medium enterprises and spawn about 200 home-scale nano enterprises.
Another activity in July pertaining to the mission mode of the government was its aim to launch ‘Organic Milk Mission’ to boost organic milk production, as told by Conrad.
In the same month, Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh launched the Meghalaya Milk Mission to facilitate the Centre’s goal of doubling farmer’s income by 2022 through promotion of milk business in the state.
He announced a sanctioned project of Rs 215 crores through National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) at the launching programme of Meghalaya Milk Mission in Shillong.
The minister said that the amount will be utilised for various training under dairy farm, chilling centre and purchase of milch animal.
In the month of November, the department of Agriculture launched the Mushroom Mission by embarking on an ambitious task to produce 5000 metric tonnes in five years while choosing to empower farmers for the plan.
State Agriculture Department will make an investment of Rs 50 crore in 136 villages over a period of five years in 33 villages for button mushroom, 70 villages for oyster mushroom, 33 for shitake mushroom.
In the same month, the much hyped second edition of the Meghalaya State Aquaculture Mission 2.0 (MSAM 2.0) was launched with a total investment of Rs 378 crore.
The MSAM 2.0 is set to be implemented over the next five years from April 1, 2019.
A bureaucrat admitted that MSAM 1.0 failed short of fulfilling its objective and said that the department needed more time to achieve the target production of 27,000 MT of fish to become self-sufficient.
