Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, today participated in the High-Level Task Force Meeting on Agriculture and Horticulture convened by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Sikkim, Shri Prem Singh Tamang, in New Delhi. The meeting saw participation from the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tripura, Prof. (Dr.) Manik Saha; the Agriculture Minister of Assam; Shri Atul Bora, the Agriculture Minister of Arunachal Pradesh; Shri Gabriel D. Wangsu, the Agriculture Minister of Sikkim; Shri Puran Kumar Gurung, Secretary, MDoNER; along with other senior officers of MDoNER, and State Governments.

The HLTF deliberated upon need for addressing key gaps in the value chain and market linkages across the North Eastern Region. The discussions focused on strengthening the agri-horti ecosystem by leveraging the region’s inherent strengths, with specialisation, quality, and the ability to stand out as the unique selling proposition of agri-horti products from the NER.

Need to systematically diagnose existing bottlenecks across the production, post-harvest, processing, marketing, and logistics segments of the value chain, while prioritising interventions and designing suitable investment mechanisms was also discussed. Reducing post-harvest losses and lowering marketing and logistics costs emerged as critical focus areas to enhance overall value realisation for farmers.

The importance of charting a clear roadmap that progresses from foundational interventions to full-scale value chain integration was also deliberated upon during the meeting. This includes developing a strategic infrastructure map to support export readiness, recognising priority commodities for each State, and promoting cluster-based development for each identified product to ensure scale, efficiency, and market alignment.

A blueprint-based approach was proposed, beginning with the selection of one product and addressing its end-to-end value chain through clearly defined short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans with product-wise targets and investment requirements. The approach also emphasised assessing, for every product, the number of farmers engaged across the NER and evaluating how farmers would benefit on a product-wise and state-wise basis. Once these interventions are implemented, the focus would be on measuring the resulting increase in farmers’ incomes.

The HLTF reaffirmed that a focused, product-specific, and cluster-driven strategy would enable measurable and sustainable outcomes, strengthen market linkages, reduce inefficiencies across the value chain, and ensure long-term income enhancement for farmers across the North Eastern Region.

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PS