NEHU vice chancellor Prof. Prabha Shankar Shukla, today inaugurated the adoption of Honey Village in the presence of S G Momin, Block Development Officer of Gambegre Block, Prof. Sujata Guru Dev Campus in-charge of NEHU, Tura Campus, and Dr. R Sasikumar who is the Nodal Officer of Incubation Centre, NEHU, Tura Campus.
Frederick A Sangma, the functional Manager, DCIC Tura and Nodal Officer, Apiculture Mission gave a short introduction about the programme. He demonstrated to the people how beekeeping will help in the development of the village by improving the livelihood of future generations.
The positive effect given by beekeeping is that they promote pollination and also produce honey which will give employment to the farmers doubling their income. The plants were also selectively chosen for each month and grown so that there won’t be a shortage of flowers for the bees to feed on. This is the reason for beekeeping being called a green industry.
Dr. R Sasikumar expressed his journey toward the adoption of Honey Village. He with his team contacted DCIC Tura and joined hands to work for Apiculture Mission. They conducted skill training for potential apiculture farmers in the Incubation Centre of NEHU, Tura Campus.
A total of 150 apiculture farmers were identified from five villages, namely Aminda Ading, Aminda Rangsa, Aminda Simsanggre, and Chigitchakgre village under Gambegre C&RD Block, West Garo Hills.
The apiculture farmers were trained successfully and input supports were distributed. Each apiculture input support kit includes bee boxes, bee nets, extractors, and other equipment and was funded under North East Hill (NEH) Scheme, ICAR. More apiculture input support will be provided based on the performance of the farmers.
The NEHU programme was implemented by ICAR-NIBSM, Raipur, Chhattisgarh in collaboration with NEHU from 2019 for the welfare and socio-economic development of farmers in the North East.
The scheme is implemented under the guidance and leadership of Dr. P K Ghosh, Director, ICAR-NIBSM and Dr. P Mooventhan, Senior Scientist, Nodal Officer, ICAR NIBSM, coordinating all developmental activities with NEHU for the betterment of the farming community. In addition, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was also signed between ICAR-NIBSM and NEHU under this programme.
The Incubation Centre, NEHU Tura Campus will extend all type of supports such as capacity building programme, technical input supports, quality assurance, trade mark and branding, and intelligent marketing at domestic and international level.
Regarding quality assurance, the Incubation Centre, NEHU Tura Campus has already established a well equipped Advance Food Testing Laboratory at NEHU Tura Campus, and also has full-fledged processing plants which are maintained by Incubation Centre NEHU Tura Campus.
In his speech, Prof. Shukla assured that the Incubation Centre of NEHU will sign buy back agreement with appropriate governing bodies to popularise Wild Organic Honey from Meghalaya into the international market.
He also said that this Honey Village will able to produce 100 per cent pure wild organic honey roughly 10,000 kg per year through modern scientific method with green processing and also enhance the livelihood standard of village people, which will be highly possible to increase the growth rate of Meghalaya from 2 per cent (As per the RBI data) to some extent.
