August 17 2022 by Admin
Spicing up her Crop Portfolio: Story of Melinda Talang
Melianda Talang is a farmer in the village of Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya. Melinda, who is always smiling, lives in a small-house surrounded by forest. Like most of the smallholder farmers belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, Melianda Talang had very little land for growing crops. So, producing for their own needs was the first priority. A couple of years ago, smallholder farmers like Melinda began to take hesitant steps towards new crop farming with new techniques to supplement their income. Meilinda has been associated with Lakadong turmeric farming for a long time. But Lakadong turmeric farming is not profitable due to low quality seeds and the lack of modern technology. Then, The Government of Meghalaya introduced lacadong cultivation in 2018. After the intervention, she got 300 Kgs of high-quality seeds through the mission. She now produces more and gets better price for her Produce. She sold her produces to CMC that helped her make Rs. 15 more per KG. Last year she made a profit of about Rs.26000 from Lakadong only. She now uses this money to send her grandkids to school and encouraging others to cultivate Lakadong.
The government of Meghalaya has distributed over 2,500 MT of quality planting material to over 7,345 farmers for expanding the area under cultivation. This resulted in a 68% increase in the area under cultivation of Lakadong Turmeric and a 66% increase in production quantity. As of now, 1,413 hectares of farming fields are under Lakadong Turmeric cultivation. Last year, the Lakadong Mission harvested 11, 832 metric tonnes of Lakadong turmeric in Meghalaya. Currently, 15 collective marketing centres and 2 processing units are present in Meghalaya.