SHILLONG: The Hill Farmers Union (HFU) has demanded the government declare 2019 as year of the farmers besides a farmers’ commission at the earliest. A delegation of the HFU met Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong on Tuesday in this regard.
The president of the union, C Shangpliang, also said that the government must establish an implementation and monitoring committee for all agriculture and allied sector schemes and missions at the block level of the state with HFU as a stakeholder.
Demanding a comprehensive agricultural policy for the state, the union said that implementation of the Agriculture Produce and Livestock Marketing Promotion and Facilitation Act 2017 will be of great help to the farming community.
They also wanted the government to allocate land and special incentives for setting up a pineapple and tomato food processing plant by HFU.
HFU also asked for allocation of special funds for conducting awareness programmes on various missions and schemes of the government besides skill training in collaboration with HFU and introduction and promotion of new technologies like mobile app development by HFU, seed technology, tissue culture lab, solar-based food dryers and other methodologies.
