Angela Shangoi- A Successful Model Woman Farmer

                                                                               

Fig.1: Smt.Angela Shangoi receiving the Award at New Delhi

        Smt. Angela Shangoi is one of the leading female progressive farmer from Umyiap valley, Mawkynbat village of West Khasi Hills district, who has made a mark in farming. Owning farmland of 4 hectares, she uses to grow local paddy variety which yield only 1.5- 1.8 MT per hectare. After the introduction of the centrally sponsored scheme, National Food Security Mission(NFSM) scheme, she started growing HYV paddy, variety MEG II which was procured from the District Agriculture Office. From the crop cutting experiment, her paddy field yielded about 3.8 MT of paddy per hectare. She is also a paddy registered seed grower with the district and shares the variety along with other fellow farmers of the village.

            Being a progressive farmer, she also grows Maize, field pea on her land which fetches very high returns even in the local market. Besides she also grows carrot, beetroot,bean and other vegetables. She is also able to market her marketable surplus in the market fetching regular returns.

            She is incidentally, one of the pioneering farmer who have taken the lead to grow large scale Pea Cultivation in her paddy field usually left fallow during the winter months. With assured irrigation from the nearby hill,  in a 1(one) hectare land, she planted around 75 kg of pea seed during the 2^nd week of December and harvested during the first week of April fetching a total yield of 4 Metric Tonnes. This timing has been well calibrated to take advantage of the lean period of supplies from the plains of Assam, thereby able to fetch an average wholesale price of Rs. 40-50 per Kg in the wholesale market in Shillong. This fetches her gross profit of around Rs. 90,000-1.00 lakh per hectare.

            Her next winter vegetable that earned her good returns is Carrot which she planted during the month of January and harvest by 3^rd week of April. She is able to get Rs. 30-50 rupees per Kg in wholesale market. From Carrot she is able to earn around 50,000/- of gross return.

Besides Pea and Carrot which she grows in large scale, she also grows Color Capsicum in a 250 Sq.Metres Greenhouse provided by the District Horticulture Office. Other vegetables that she grows in smaller scale are Coriander, Beetroot, Cucumber, Brinjal and Tomato.

            During the year 2012-13, she formed a Self Help Group (SHG) called “Iatreilang SHG” with 10 members. She is the President of the SHG and under her leadership; all the members are emulating her footsteps and collectively work for the benefit of the group. On March 2015, the Office of the District Horticulture Officer also provided her group with a Bolero Pickup Jeep for transportation and evacuation of her produces to the wholesale market in Shillong. With this transport vehicle, she is able to swiftly market her produce to the capital city Shillong on market days. She also subscribed to the wholesale market prices SMS provided by the department of agriculture, which she receives on her mobile phone and rely on this free information service before taking her vegetable to market. 

           

Fig. 2: Smt Angela Shangoi at her village at Mawkynbat

          Smt. Angela Shangoi inspite of all odds and supporting a family of 8 school and college going children, through sheer hard work, strong determination and leadership qualities has set a fine example for the district of West Khasi Hills and has endeared herself even to the higher ups in the Department who knows her by name and acknowledge her hard work by recognising her in State and district level crop competition.

Usually, its very difficult to grow any crop during the winter months due to stray cattle and horses, which are let loose to feed and graze on the field after harvesting of paddy. Angela and her group members had to build a fence made from locally available materials, to protect their winter crop from grazing by cows and horses. Though this effort, she could protect her pea crop from the animals and hence fetch a good price as she got to harvest and market the crop during off-season in the plains of Assam.

On March 2016, she was conferred the Agriculture Minister’s Krishi Karman Award as outstanding farmer and received a cash prize of Rs. 2.0 lakhs along with a citation from the Prime Minister of India. On reaching back home from New Delhi, instead of spending the cash award money on buying consumer goods, she invested the award money on buying a brand new Power Tiller to further her farming enterprise. This shows the outstanding quality of the lady to improve her farming through technology induction. 

The exemplary example of this woman farmer has made her village of Mawkynbat and Umiap take up to Pea cultivation in a big scale and today the entire fertile Umyiap valley is dotted with pea and carrot cultivation, after seeing the successes of this lady farmer. 

(The Writer works as Assistant Director of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture Meghalaya and can be reached at csshabong@gmail.com)