what is the • Present status of horticulture in Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh
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ARUNACHAL PRADESH: Farmers in remote, mountainous villages of land-locked Arunachal Pradesh have found a huge marketplace to sell their products without any hassle. No longer do they have to negotiate treacherous tracks to reach markets and to deal with exploitative money-lenders and ‘middlemen’ because now they can sell their agricultural and horticultural produce at the click of a mouse and are getting better prices, too. It’s all thanks to launched by the administration.
The e-portal is the brainchild of Prince Dhawan, the district magistrate of Lohit in eastern Arunachal. After Dhawan became the DM last year, he helped the farmers come together & form Farmer Producers’ Organisations The portal has helped the FPO take their products to merchants across the country. The Arunachal farmers mostly grow turmeric, black pepper, ginger, sticky rice, orange, apple, kiwi etc. The merchants directly contact them and place orders. The government has tied up with two companies to transport the goods outside the state.
“Earlier, the farmers faced a problem selling their produce. Also, at the time of sowing seeds, they used to borrow from money lenders. Post-harvest, they never got a good price as they had to sell their produce to the money lenders to repay debts,” Dhawan told this newspaper. Now, the farmers are not required to borrow money as the government funds the FPO “The prices of all the products were previously very less. Now, the farmers are increasingly getting connected to markets outside, thanks to the portal,” the IAS officer from Chandigarh said. Currently, the portal caters to some 300 farmers in Lohit and Anjaw districts, but Dhawan said farmers of other districts, too, would soon have the FPOs. “Apple is grown on a large scale in West Kameng district.