SHILLONG, May 1: Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh on Tuesday attended the strawberry festival held at Khyndailad located at the heart of the city and said that the taste of strawberry grown in Meghalaya is of ‘world class’.
Speaking to reporters at the sidelines of the festival, Lyngdoh said, “For the first time the tourism department in collaboration with the department of horticulture has gone ahead to encourage our growers, our farmers (by organizing the festival).”
“Couple of weeks back we have had the strawberry festival in villages where strawberry is locally grown that is in Sohliya, Nohron and Syntung villages and the festival was meant to create awareness and sensitized people about the need to encourage locally grown produces and today we have gone a step ahead by also bringing the produce to the state capital. The idea being that the organic produce which is strawberry has got not only huge market potential for farmers but can also create livelihood opportunities for our farmers and growers,” he said.
Asserting the need to encourage the farmers of the state, Lyngdoh said, “The most important thing is that we would like to sustain this effort for which we request the members of the public as well as travellers to Meghalaya to visit the stalls here in the heart of our capital city and thereby encourage our children of the soil, who are tilling and engage in the production of strawberry, so that very soon like pineapple, our strawberry will also go global.”
Asked, the minister said that strawberry is one of the very rare fruits that is locally grown here in Meghalaya and it has huge market potential and its taste is something that is world class.
“And also we have growers from distant villages of Riwar and Ri-bhoi and we would like to make sure that the efforts of the tourism department should be insync with the livelihood of our people, which is why we have organized just couple weeks ago the strawberry festival and today is the second stage is to have this strawberry market and the footfall has been very encouraging,” he added.
