Content area
Full text
Abstract missing
The North East India comprising of eight states namely Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura has a total geographical area of 262180 km^sup 2^ which is about 8% of the country's total area with a population of about 45 million (2011 census). Agriculture and allied sector is the major source of livelihood for the majority of the workforce (around 50-70% across the states). By and large, the region is characterized by frazility, marginality, inaccessibility, cultural heterogeneity, ethnicity and rich in biodiversity. Rural population (82%) is agrarian and depends on agriculture and allied sector for livelihood in the absence of industries, except in the state of Assam. Around 56% of the area is under low altitude, 33% mid altitude and 11% under high altitude. The agricultural production system is characterized by and large CDR (Complex diverse risk prone) type, low cropping intensity, subsistence farming, undulating topography and faulty land use pattern. Under this low investment-low-income farming situation, probably horticulture sector has desirable attributes to accelerate the agricultural growth process in the region. Agriculture and allied sector particularly horticulture sector plays very important role towards sustainable rural livelihoods in all farming system in general and in rainfed and hilly farming system in particular like the north east region. Increase in production can be induced by research, development/extension and infrastructural facilities to take prudent public investment decision through understanding the relative importance of productivity enhancing factors (Thorat et al., 2006). Viewing the importance and growth potential of the horticulture sector, planning commission has given special focus to this sector for its holistic development and considerable investment has been made during twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17). Primary objective of this plan investment is to increase area, production and productivity of various agricultural and horticultural crops in all the north eastern states and to increase the livelihood of the resource poor farmers. Major impediments for attracting induce investment in the food grain sector is the lack of supply of seed and quality planting material, lack of or very high transportation cost and availability of market for these commodities. Low volume of marketable surplus and lack of assured supply of these high value products throughout the year, constraints the development of...





