The Farmer’s market has revealed an important issue of nutrition, particularly among women and children. Through the home visits, it was realised that many of the families in East Khasi Hills District consumed the same type of food from morning till evening, throughout the weeks, months and years. The food consisting of ricemeal, potatoes and dried fish or meat is the staple food for the families. They hardly consume eggs, fruits or green vegetables. Therefore, they suffer from malnutrition and anemia. 

The Monthly Farmers Market organized by the Social Service Centre under the FARM North East Programme has provided a platform to the farmers for reviving wild edibles, green vegetables which are rich in nutrients and are being forgotten and neglected by the community. Urban consumers started realizing the importance of these green vegetables and wild edibles due to their health concerns but people in the villages are still to realise this because they cultivate vegetables only for sale but not for self-consumption. One of the farmers Elmina Nongspung shares, “many of us are complaining that we are poor we don’t have food to eat, but are we aware that we are blessed with lots of biodiversities that our mother nature had provided us? We think we are poor because we are not aware and not making use of what we have, many of the wild edibles are being neglected and forgotten by us.

We only think how to get money by selling good vegetables in the market and we are consuming ourselves the neglected one because we are not concern about our health, therefore we need to change our mindset”.

Looking back at the Workshop on Food Security held at Jongksha village in the month of March 2018 to promote underutilize indigenous food resources for achieving food and nutrition security, the youths have identified around 30 wild edibles that are locally available in the community, but sad to say that most of these vegetables are not consumed by them. The state of Meghalaya, particularly East Khasi Hills and Ri-Bhoi district are blessed with rich varieties of nutritional indigenous wild edibles, but with the advent of junk food and fast food culture, many of the students and youth are not even aware of the nutritional wild edibles.

To revive the traditional food and bring acquaintance of wild edibles with the new generation, Social Service Centre organised a campaign on Nutrition.The first Nutritional campaign was organized at Marmain village under RiBhoi District beyond FARM Project during the celebration of the International Women’s Day on 8th March 2019. The focus was given on women to improve their nutrition through the consumption of nutrients rich local species.

The second campaign, ‘biodiversity walk’ was organized at Lamsain village in East Khasi Hills District beyond FARM project on 26th March 2019 with some youth to identify the wild plants of edible in nature. During the walk, some of the plants which have medicinal values were also identified by the elderly people in the community. Cooking demonstration of these vegetables was initiated by the community and around 8 varieties of vegetables were cooked. The third campaign was at Mary’s Garden School Jongksha B on 28th March 2019, where school children have participated in biodiversity walk to identify and collect the green vegetables and wild edibles so that they can include it in their Mid-Day Meal.

 “We have lots of green vegetables/wild edibles in our surrounding which are rich in nutrients, but we did not value it and we provide the children only rice and dal. This campaign has changed our mindset and makes us realize the importance of the green vegetables that we can include it in the Mid-Day Meal so that it will help the children to live a healthy life”, says Bermen Songthiang, one of the teachers from the school.

SSC has also started a campaign against junk food in RCLP school Lamsain and Mary’s Garden school Jongksha B, to stop children from bringing junk food in the school compound.