GUWAHATI, June 20 - Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in association with National Horticulture Board, APEDA and with support from Ecocert organised a one-day seminar on �North East as an Organic Hub� at Aizawl recently.
Welcoming the guests, Ishantor Sobhapandit, Regional Director, North East, Indian Chamber of Commerce, shared the scope and potential of Mizoram to be a hundred per cent organic State. He said that Mizoram was strategically located bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh which could be used as a ready export market of organic products produced in the State. It can also be the gateway to the South East Asian market in terms of organic products, he added.
�Infrastructural improvement at the farm level with adoption of new technologies is the way out for growth of organic production� said Agriculture Minister R Lalzirliana, while inaugurating the seminar.
He also spoke of pioneering efforts made by Mizoram Government by introducing the Organic Farming Act way back in 2004. �Through the Act the State has encouraged the farmers to use organic inputs like vermin-composts, bio-fertilisers and has strategically reduced the use of chemical inputs to make the State completely organic, which is mostly organic by default,� he said.
The challenge, however, was to create a value chain so that farm produces could move to finished products to the end consumers and thereby increasing the income of the farmers, the Minister added.
