This year’s Cucumber Festival of Aliba Village, a festival intended to celebrate rural cucumber farmers, was a huge success with the farmers selling out their cucumbers within an hour of opening their stalls on day-2 of the event. This had the interest of not just the cucumber farmers but also the Aliba Village Council roused.
“In a joint meeting today, the Village Council decided that the same organizing committee continues planning for next year’s festival as well. So we are overjoyed. We’ve decided to come up with even better strategies,” Temjentola, Agriculture Officer and organizing member secretary, told Mokokchung Times.
According to her, it was a ‘grand success’ because not only did the cucumber growers find a platform but the festival was able to give platforms to many other SHGs and artists to promote their products and monetize from it.
“I believe that the festival was able to provide many other farmers, other than cucumber farmers, with the opportunity to sell their finished crop products and serve as an opportunity to turn it into a rural livelihood generation,” she said.
She also stated that the overall income earned at this year’s festival was Rs 7.6 lakhs, which is a Rs 60,000 increase over previous year’s income, and that the cucumber alone sold worth Rs 2.16 lakh.
However, she viewed that the festival was a success with lots of support from all sections of the society and added that they are looking forward to next year and hoped that the festival will encourage more rural farmers.