Meghalaya exporting over 1.3 tonnes of Pineapples to the Middle East

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Meghalaya exporting over 1.3 tonnes of Pineapples to the Middle East. To further promote and build the market for Meghalaya’s pineapples, the government is organising a Pineapple festival in Delhi. The festival will be held post the celebrations of Independence Day.

Following on the successful export of Khasi mandarin last year, the Department of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare, Government of Meghalaya and Meghalaya Basin Management Agency (MBMA) has recently facilitated market linkages of over 1.3 tonnes of Pineapples to the Middle East. This is part of the continued efforts to reduce the gulf between the farmers of the state and lucrative international markets. The pineapples from Meghalaya are being sold across malls in Dubai, Kuwait and Sharjah, but more importantly the farmers are enjoying the fruit of their labour with up to two times increase in price realisation from these trades.

The efforts closer home has resulted in sustained market linkages with domestic processors and retailers. Last year, over 40 tonnes of pineapples were shipped to a Karnataka based processor to be further exported to European and North American markets. This year, the same processor has established a mobile processing unit at Umdihar IVCS, in Umdihar Village (Ri Bhoi) for taking in larger quantities and over 23 tonnes of Pineapples have been processed by the unit in the first week of its operation.

The processing units require pineapples weighing a kilogram and above and don’t accept fruits of smaller sizes. During harvest season, entire fields are harvested for sale, but only the large pineapples (Grade A) get sold to the processing units. This leaves the farmers with a large quantity of smaller sized pineapples (Grade B aka table