Trees for Wealth: tEA to plant one billion fruit trees by 2050

July 5, 2022 32 Views No Comment

Our Correspondent
Kohima | July 5

The Entrepreneurs Associates (tEA) is targeting to plant 1 billion fruit trees by 2050 under ‘Trees for Wealth’ (TfW) for shared prosperity and sustainable development.

tEA CEO, Neichute Doulo said that TfW movement launched by tEA on November 22, 2019, is a first of its kind to bring about a revolution in the local economy alongside restoring and conserving the environment through the wide scale plantation of fruit trees.

Addressing a press conference here today, he said that the slogan ‘Micro by One, Volume by Mass’ is built on the unique land holding system and social structure of ethnic communities of Nagaland and Manipur states particularly, and the North East region in general.

Since 2010, tEA has planted about 1 lakh trees for Mithun Bio Fencing through the support of TATA Trusts and in 2014, planted about 35,000 native oaks with the support of Axis Bank Foundation.

“But in both the cases, we did not see perpetuation of increased tree plantation by farmers on their own. Farmers planted trees only during the project support period. The concerns of flash flood in Nagaland in 2014 and erratic climate changes have made tEA to do our bit for global environment restoration,” Doulo said.

Therefore, he said, they came up with TfW movement so that farmers and individuals on their own plant many more fruit trees once they see cash income streaming in from the fruits.

Having experimented with a ‘Trees for Rice’ campaign in 2016, where, for every 1 fruit tree planted, 1 Kg of rice was given to farmers and also free distribution of thousands of Plum fruit trees, Persimmon, Avocado, etc in 2016 and 2017 gave us the confidence to innovate an ambitious programme to launch the TfW in 2019 to plant 1 billion fruit trees by 2050, Doulo said.

The movement has an ambitious but realistic mission to plant 2 million fruit trees by 2025, 200 million by 2035, and 1 billion by 2050.

For this tEA will work with 1 million farmers ensuring their income generation and livelihood sustainability to generate an income of Rs 2 lakh per family by 2030 from fruits.

TfW to generate 1 million farm-based jobs
Ultimately, the movement will generate 1 million farm-based jobs and 2 million jobs in logistics and food processing activities by 2050, generating at least 3 million jobs for the North East Region.

“This will provide opportunities for families and youth to be meaningfully engaged and financially secure to stay back and earn income in their native villages. This will reverse the trend of unmitigated urban migration and also migration from NER to metros. All of these interlinked developments will ultimately usher in a Rs 1 trillion local economy (2020 constant price), while simultaneously addressing the effects of climate change through the increase in tree population,” Doulo said.

Under the movement, 12 districts in Nagaland and 2 districts in Manipur have been covered till May 2022.

In 2021-22 alone, the movement has been able to impact 1,455 men and 824 women and since the launch of the movement, over 10,000 farmers have been trained and inducted into the movement.

A total of 4.6 lakh fruit trees have been planted since the launch of the movement and tEA’s target for 2022 is to plant 5 lakh fruit trees. A large percentage of the saplings under this movement are being raised by women, farmers, Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), daily wagers and labourers.

Under a programme called ‘Pay Back Environmentally,’ with the support of Caring Friends, Mumbai, as a COVID-19 pandemic response, 2000 street vendors and daily wagers in August 2020 were paid Rs. 2000 to buy 1 bag of rice for their kitchen and pay back with 100 fruit tree saplings later. The project could not materialize well in 2021. But it is expected to get back 2 lakh fruit trees in 2022.

Source: https://morungexpress.com/trees-for-wealth-tea-to-plant-one-billion-fruit-trees-by-2050