By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, May 31: While Delhi consumers pay Rs 120 for a single Meghalaya pineapple, farmers in Umdihar are finally breaking the Rs 15-per-kilo ceiling by bypassing traditional middlemen through a new state-backed collective model that targets European export markets.
This was informed by Commissioner and Secretary, Planning, Finance etc., Government of Meghalaya, Dr Vijay Kumar D, who delivered a TEDx talk titled “Transforming the Lives of Small Farmers: The Meghalaya Story,” where he speaks about a successful model for increasing the incomes of small and marginal farmers in Meghalaya.
For years, Rikynti Shadap, a pineapple farmer from Ri-Bhoi, struggled to sell her produce. Despite growing fruit with a Brix value (sugar content) of 18—well above the national average—she often had to trek across difficult terrain and streams to reach local markets, only to receive a fraction of the fruit’s retail value.
Her situation represents a shift in the “Meghalaya Model,” an initiative moving 1 lakh small and marginal farmers away from survival farming toward collective bargaining. By establishing over 500 cooperatives, the state has enabled individual farmers—many of them tribal women—to operate as a single economic unit with the scale to negotiate.
At the centre of this transition is the Umdihar PRIME Hub, a processing facility built on a Community-Public-Private Partnership (CPPP). In this arrangement, the community provides the land, the government provides the infrastructure, and the private sector manages technical expertise and market links.
The facility ensures that pineapples are no longer sold only as raw, perishable fruit. By processing the harvest, the hub significantly increases the value of the produce. Fresh table pineapples are sold to retail giants like Reliance Fresh at a 25% premium. Frozen cubes are exported to Europe for baby food, capturing a 700% increase in value. Freeze-dried snacks are targeted at pharmaceutical and niche markets, with a projected value increase of over 1,700%.
This strategy is being replicated across other sectors. Lakadong turmeric, once sold primarily as raw rhizomes, is now being processed into high-value biocurcumin tablets, which has the potential to quadruple farmer incomes.
Marketed under the “Meghalaya Collectives” brand, these products are now available on major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and in flagship stores in Delhi. For farmers like Rikynti, the change is reflected in the bank balance; agriculture is transitioning from a struggle for subsistence into a professional enterprise with a footprint in markets as far as Dubai, Singapore, and Germany.
