iTEAMS – An Agri-Business Model for Enhancing Farmers’ Income in Meghalaya

An agribusiness model has been taken up as a case study to explore the scope and possibilities in Meghalaya to convert agriculture as an enterprise by transforming agriculture to agribusiness in the form of monetisation of farmers’ produce, and to provide demand-led sustainable economic growth. The successful transformation of investments into developmental outcomes require a variety of strategic initiatives. Product positioning of produce in different niche markets could be successful through promotion of contract farming via value chain process particularly for high value horticultural crops. Integrated Technology Enabled Agri Management System (iTEAMS), a farmers/produce driven model, may be one such attempt in this direction. Establishment of market intelligence system for timely dissemination of information regarding day-to-day prices at various market points along with development of the agriculture information and capacity building services for the farmers through iTEAMS may be the order of the day for the North East as a whole and especially for Meghalaya. There is a need to standardise and validate convergence-led agribusiness models and thereby trace out location and context specificity of such models for enhancing the household level farm income and ensuring the livelihood security. There is a need to examine the imperatives which would facilitate convergence among various related sectors. The question of partnerships and linkages need serious attention for devising pragmatic pathways for a cost and time-effective outreach.