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KOHIMA, 5 Aug:<\/strong> With the central government earmarking over Rs 11,000 crore to encourage palm oil production, Nagaland has launched a ‘mega’ oil palm plantation drive.<\/p>\n The agriculture minister’s adviser, Mhathung Yanthan, inaugurated the campaign at the Agri Expo site in Chumoukedima district on Friday, stated a DIPR release here.<\/p>\n Speaking on the occasion, Yanthan emphasised the significance of the drive, highlighting its “national scope.”<\/p>\n Acknowledging the environmental concerns related to oil palm plantations, he encouraged farmers and the department to “take on the challenge and invest sincere efforts in becoming proficient oil palm growers.”<\/p>\n Head of marketing development at Godrej, Swamani Dutta assured the provision of essential resources like fertilisers, pesticides, and farming equipment in the coming months, along with the establishment of the a ‘samadhran centre’ in Dimapur.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, following the launch of the drive, the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) on Saturday expressed concern that commercial cultivation of oil palm could have long-term negative impact on the health, forest, biodiversity, and quality of the soil of the state.<\/p>\n NSF president Kegwayhun Tep and general secretary Siipuni Ng Philo said that Nagaland alone has a total of 5,423 hectares under oil palm cultivation across seven districts and efforts are being made on a war footing to expand the area under oil palm cultivation, “for which the department of agriculture appears to be leaving no stone unturned.”<\/p>\n “Our rich biodiversity, flora and fauna, wild fruit plants, rare medicinal plants and the habitat of rare species stand threatened to be annihilated if the plantation drive continues,” they said.<\/p>\n The NSF leaders said that one cannot ignore the fact that an oil palm tree requires 200 to 300 litres of water per day and Nagaland, as a state which often faces drought and uneven rainfall, cannot afford to cultivate such a water-guzzling plant on a commercial scale.<\/p>\n The federation urged the department to exercise utmost caution in propagating the economic benefit of plantation of oil palm. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KOHIMA, 5 Aug: With the central government earmarking over Rs 11,000 crore to encourage palm oil production, Nagaland has launched a ‘mega’ oil palm plantation drive. The agriculture minister’s adviser, Mhathung Yanthan, inaugurated the campaign at the Agri Expo site in Chumoukedima district on Friday, stated a DIPR release here. Speaking on the occasion, Yanthan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-221841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}