Mushroom cultivation paying dividend

By our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, March 18:  “To have a balanced livelihood, we need a balanced plan. Instead of depending on others, we can grow our own livelihood with own ideas,” Pranjal Baruah, founder of Mushroom Development Foundation (MDF), told this reporter on sustaible development of community-based people in remote areas in the Northeast.

Baruah started a unique project with the concept of sustaible development for people of remote areas. The project was started in the Sopur area of Kamrup district with the people of 50 villages on mushroom production.

The project was started in 2005. It is still going on with much profit. It helps maintain sustaible development of the people of Sopur. “We started the MDF in 1994 with the motto of bringing a change in the socio-economic situation among the grass-roots-level people who are always left behind. For that we have done such projects in the Northeast with the local people. In Assam, the projects are successful, and for that we had to struggle much,” said Baruah.

Sustaible development is a new concept to develop the condition of rural people with a balanced earning. It is a joint approach by the community people to earn their livelihood through joint works. The people of a specific area can do surveys and then cultivate mushroom scientifically on a specific field of product. People participate in the project to get a standard production of their products. MDF in the Northeast is trying to help people of rural areas of all the states with their scientific survey and way of cultivation. They have introduced mushroom cultivation as a new livelihood activity, because mushroom has a good demand in the market and the weather in the region is also favourable for this.

MDF has started a new mushroom project in Ri- Bhoi district in Meghalaya. The me of the project is ‘Eco-friendly Integrated Livelihood Mission’ which was started in October, 2014. The project aims to grow mushroom cultivation as a tool among the small and micro-producers and farmers in a cost effective manner both for inputs and collection of their product to cope up with livelihood-related critical gaps. The project included 36 villages and has started the scientific survey and on-field training of farmers.  The training was started on last March 14, 2015 in Ri-Bhoi district.        

Baruah said that they have more plans to continue these type of projects in the rest of the states in the Northeast. Till now, they have done such projects successfully in Assam, Tripura, galand and Aruchal Pradesh. They will also start the project in the other three states in the region.