SHILLONG: The government recently adopted the “Meghalaya State Organic and Natural Farming Policy 2023” to turn the hill state into a “national leader” in organic farming, even as 15,000 hectares of area in the state are organically certified and another 2,000 hectares are in the process of being certified.
“Our target is to increase the total area under organic certification to 1 lakh hectares in the next five years and the process for this will be initiated in the next financial year through the launch of a state organic mission,” chief minister Conrad K’ongkal Sangma said in the assembly while presenting the budget for 2023-24 recently even as he allocated Rs 25 crore for this ambitious programme, which he said would “make Meghalaya the national leader in organic cultivation”.
Stating that marketing of agricultural produce and protecting farmers against price fluctuations was an important priority for the government, he said, “We are working with a network of 500 collectives, including cooperative societies, farmer producer organisations and village organisations to provide decentralised agri-marketing support.”
Sangma explained that at each production cluster, a collective marketing centre comprising an aggregation-cum-mini-processing facility is being constructed and handed over to a local collective, adding that interest free working capital loans of up to Rs 50 lakh are also provided to the collectives to directly buy the produce from the farmers.

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