Arunachal Pradesh signs MoUs with leading organic firms

The Arunachal Pradesh government has signed MoUs with leading organic production and certification agencies under Centre's Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North East Region.
Under its this flagship programme, the Centre aims to brand North East as an organic hub of the world, an official report said here today.
Under the mission, the department of agriculture would undertake organic cultivation for various crops in 5000 hectares of land across the state.
As part of the scheme, the identification and selection of the farmers would be done in cluster approach.
Once the produce are organically certified, value addition, branding and marketing of target crops would be undertaken under the banner of Farmers Producers Company (FPC), the report said.

While briefing about the mission, State Mission Coordinator, Okit Palling informed that in the first phase, Centre has approved 10 FPCs while other districts would be covered in the second phase.

He further said that the selection of the agencies would be done for empanelment at national level followed by technical presentation from the agencies.
Sikkim State Co-operative Supply and Marketing Federation (SIMFED), Gurgaon-based Sheel Biotech, state's Oppu-engineering and Agro services have been empanelled for the scheme, Palling added.
Agriculture Commissioner Hage Khoda has urged all the empanelled agencies to work with enthusiasm for transforming the state into an organic state.

He however, warned the agency not to sublet the certification agency to any other agencies and assured all logistic and administrative support from the government, the report added.