<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Less than a month since it was inaugurated with much fanfare, the much-hyped organic market is fast losing its appeal – both among the farmers as well as customers.<\/p>\n
When the organic market near bus stand at Supermarket was inaugurated on September 4, it spelt hope for local farmers as they thought they had finally found a place to sell their agricultural produce. Barring a few rows, almost every stall was occupied and the sight of fresh vegetables brought directly from agricultural fields by local farmers appealed to many health-conscious customers too.<\/p>\n
However, barely 20 days later, the number of stalls has dwindled to almost one-third now compared to the almost full occupancy when the market was inaugurated. Also, there is very little buzz as customer footfall has fallen drastically.<\/p>\n
When the organic market was open, the general populace welcomed the idea and it became a subject of discussion even on social media. And on September 7, governor PB Acharya had also shopped at the market and donated Rs 2 lakh for buying a pick-up truck to help local farmers bring their agricultural produce to the market.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Nagaland Post visited the market and interacted with the farmers to find out why the numbers of sellers had reduced so drastically. Most of the local women at the market said that not many people were aware of the market selling organic local produce. Customer came, but they came in trickles, they complained. <\/p>\n
Their complaint seemed justified as there were hardly two to three customers in the market when this reporter interacted with them on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The second issue faced by the local women farmers is transportation. Many of them come from Chumukedima area and beyond.<\/p>\n
Speaking to this reporter, a member of the Farmers Interest Group (FIG) from Chumukedima, A Aprilie said that while she appreciated the government for not charging them rent for the stalls, transportation had emerged as a major bottleneck. <\/p>\n
She claimed that one-way trip costs her Rs 120 and with the money spent on food every day, she ended up spending more than Rs 300 just to sell her produce at the market. And on days customers were less, she ended up spending more than earning. She admitted that initially business was good as customers thronged to her stall to buy her produce.<\/p>\n
A cold storage facility is another aspect that needs to be looked into as Aprilie said there were days when unsold produce had to be consumed by the entire family at home as these have short shelf life. <\/p>\n
Appealing to customers to buy from farmers like her, the FIG member explained that though their organic produce might not look as appealing and fresh as vegetables grown using chemicals and fertilisers, but their produce were much tastier and healthier.<\/p>\n
For two local farmers from Zani village, about 7 to 8 km further from Fourth Mile, they need to change autos twice to reach Dimapur. The duo of Neingou and Salu who occupy stalls side by side said they spent around Rs 600 just for transportation. And like Aprilie, they said that on days when there were few customers, they suffered losses.<\/p>\n
The local women urged the media to make the people aware about the market and appealed to the people to buy for them and support them. <\/p>\n
The minimum the authorities can do to help the farmers is provide transportation, set up a cold storage facility soon, install a signboard and beautify the area to attract more customers.<\/p>\n
Daily organic market struggles to survive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[679],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nagaland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}