Economic Prosperity and Nutritional Security in the North Eastern Hill Regions

Communities in the rural hill regions face a series of challenges in food and nutritional security. The geographical terrain and vagaries of weather coupled with inaccessibility are some of the major problems faced by the farmers. The modern high synthetic agro-input based farming systems are not the solutions for these fragile ecosystems. Farmers need to be empowered with low-cost sustainable solutions .They should be least dependant on external inputs. This should not make them vulnerable to produce more food or sacrifice their crops to possible pest attack. Farming communities need to be trained in a wide variety of technologies available to address these issues by utilizing the natural resources.

Farmers are the true scientists of agriculture who know  a lot about the crops, biodiversity and ecosystems.  Their traditional knowledge needs to be understood through the lens of science and appropriate technologies need to be developed. Innumerable success stories are published from different parts of the world; some are available on the web.

To address the issues of North Eastern Hill Regions The Arunachal University of Studies, Namsai, Arunachal Pradesh, India  is organizing an International Seminar on "Economic Prosperity & Nutritional Security in Northeastern Hill regions through Horticulture" with special reference to Arunachal Pradesh on February 3-4, 2014.