ITANAGAR, Jun 27: Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein has asked the officers of the agriculture and allied departments to come up with pragmatic schemes and prepare long-term (five years) and short term (one year) plans to boost the agriculture and allied sectors and achieve the target of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022.
Mein said this while addressing the officers during the pre-budget consultative meeting here on Thursday.
Besides emphasizing on local spice production and functionalizing the auction centres to boost the marketing of local spices, the DCM called for “revamping the old irrigation channels to improve the system.”
Mein informed that Rs 1700 crore allocated to various departments in last year’s budget remained unspent as the departments could not submit utilization certificates.
Home Minister Bamang Felix, who also attended the meeting, advocated boosting the marketing of agriculture and horticulture produces.
Citing the example of large cardamom, which is cultivated on large scales by the farmers, he said “once it was a success story but due to the absence of proper marketing, the farmers are not able to sell their produce, and now it is becoming a failing story.”
Felix said the need of the hour was to “give the farmers a proper marketing facility where they can sell their produces for remunerative prices.”
Agriculture etc Minister Tage Taki said he is “working with a single mission to achieve the target of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022.”
“To double their income, we need to uplift dairy farming, piggery, fishery and backyard poultry, which will give the farmers easy and quick income,” he said, and called for keeping sufficient fund for purchasing feeds, “which is the main hurdle in dairy farming, piggery, poultry and fishery.”
He said the system of providing tractors through the CM’s Farm Mechanization Scheme would be updated with more useful and lighter modern machineries.
Among others, Agriculture Production Commissioner AK Singh, AHV & Dairy Farming Development Secretary Bidol Tayeng, Agriculture & Horticulture Secretary Mimum Tayeng, Fishery Secretary Geyum Padu, Planning Secretary Himanshu Gupta, and NABARD GM Gopa Kumaran Nair attended the meeting and offered inputs. (DCMO)
