Agri Minister Urges Farmers to Work With Them to Achieve Modernising Goal
Inia Seruiratu is urging farmers to work with their officers in order to ensure that Fiji’s modernising of the agricultural sector is achieved.
The Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management was speaking during a talanoa session for Copra farmers in Savusavu on Friday. He was responding to incidences where agriculture officers would be chased away by some farmers in their efforts to collect information on farmers around the country. Mr Seruiratu said before they did not have proper data on farmers but now they were collecting them. “Now in terms of the modernisation efforts most of them are now coming back to the Agriculture Ministry because they know that we are beginning to focus now with the assistance not only on individuals but more focused now on groups,” he said.
“For the last three years we have been working on our agriculture statistics. We have the database now for the ministry and if we click the farmers name all the records of the farmer will be there.”
Mr Seruiratu said collecting information from farmers was difficult because his officers were sometimes chased.
“What we want from farmers is honest sharing of information’s which would make our work easier,” he said.
“With the data collected we will categorise the farmers and then issue Identification Card (ID) to farmers which will contain information’s about them.
“We didn’t have proper data three years ago and we are working on it. We are also working on our customer service and feedbacks.”