it was fascinating to see at a meeting organised by areca research foundation, vivekanand engg collge, campco -farmers\\\’ cooperatives which markets about ten per cent  of the produce worth 700 crores; a variety of areca peeling machiens develoepd by individual innovators without any formal training buta lso some with such backgrounds.

key learnings:

a) if there are different varieties of areca, a crop  mentioned in ancient travelogues of Chinese and Egyptians to India, and if the nuts have different properties of husk, and skin thickness, then mACHINES SHOULD eitrher be able to adapt to those differences or be designed differently. we had models s by jagdish which could  process cleanly the nuts ranging from diameter of a few centimeters to couple of inches. There were others which would only peel green, red or dried area and that too of specific range of sizes. adjustment has to be done to accomodate diversity of  sizes and shapes, and quality.

b) there were some who had sole 700 machines in three years like  vishwanath, while others had only made one piece and that was still not ready for market. most agonizing was the case of  farmer whom we had met in shodh yatra in malnad more than three years ago but whose prototype had not received any support for improvement so far from NIF.

c) more on teh diversity later. i therefor proposed after consultation with colleagues in charge of value addition and research  in NIF that we needed to constitute a regional research adv committee. We did taht. We requested organisers ( who represnted major stakeholders   including our old friend sree padre, a famour journalist and editor of adike patrike, to facilitate, and president of research foundation to chair. A committee  will meet tomorrow  and include all the innovators present. it will identify all the  cases where improvement is called for, pin point excatly what needed to be improved and then recommend amount needed, mentors, facilitators and send the minutes tr NIF. NIF  after accepting the entries, doing benchamrk, verifying all the claims, and scrutinising teh recommendations, sanction the amount with in a month.

i hope that decentralised, participatory, transparent and accounatble system of processing such innovations through farmers\\\’ organizations, and experts in teh region, will provide a faster way of doing justice to local innovators and their aspirations.

NIf after verifying all teh c,

Anil K Gupta