Over a hundred farmers in the Nitaipukhuri area in Sivasagar, who gave up cultivating mustard, other leafy vegetables and black and green gram due to monkey menace in some of the most fertile locations in this upper Assam district inhabited by indigenous tribes and communities, have been saved by lablab or flat beans.
Lablab beans, which were least popular among the villagers for the misbelief that people may faint if they enter the gardens of this nutritionally rich product — an excellent source of protein and minerals — have shown them a new way.
A team of 16 farmers has proved this superstition wrong and now have exported 500kg of lablab or flat beans to the New Spitalfields market in London, from where farm-fresh products go to various European markets. Earlier, only some farmers with progressive ideas have been engaged in its production but for household consumption only.
Several farmers from neighbouring Tinsukia district have also dispatched 5,000 Assam lemons (kaji nemu) with them on Wednesday, in the first shipment of lablab beans to be sent from upper Assam abroad.
“Locals don’t buy lablab beans usually. There was no market for lablab beans. But our unemployed youths, who are from farmers’ families, have got a new export option now,” Dhingporiya Mustard FED Producer Company managing director Mantosh Saikia said on Thursday.
The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) flagged off the first export consignment of flat or lablab beans from Sivasagar district to London, on Wednesday. It was flagged off by state agriculture minister Atul Bora and APEDA chairman Abhishek Dev. The Assam lemons have GI tag and are under the One District One Product (ODOP), an initiative of the Centre. The consignment is set to reach the London market in the next couple of days after a halt in New Delhi.
Buoyed by the success, the farmers have planned lablab cultivation on 100 bighas next, exporter Kaushik Boruah said.
