Agriculture, climate change

I WAS bemused to read the glowing comments (The Fiji Times, 5/10) by the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Waterways, when handing over “irrigation kits” to farmers.

He talked about “investment” in the future, security of livelihoods, all aimed at enhancing resilience for the communities and agriculture sector.

It all makes good sense. What caught my eye was a picture of the huge diesel/ petrol generator which is part of all this all important “irrigation kit”.

Whilst government ministers, including the Minister

of Environment, continue to talk about climate change, here was an opportunity where more thought ought to have been given into a project which could potentially have been a long term investment.

Why not invest in solarpowered irrigation facilities?

For the information of the relevant departments, these kits are to be deployed in mainly the western and northern parts, where the sun shines abundantly throughout the year.

Most farming activities are done during the day when the sun shines.

These are areas which also suffer droughts which will continue to worsen as echoed by the recent IPCC

Reports.

Photo-voltaic irrigation sets are readily available and used in many parts of the world such as India, Israel, Africa, China etc.

In terms of their total life cycle costs, they are cheaper and have almost zero running costs, as they are powered by the sun.

The poor farmers will have to continue to fork out the cost of fuels which are rising on a daily basis.

Surely, the minister and the Government would have done well to assist their “climate champion” credentials by walking the talk and investing in projects, policies and strategies that will genuinely reduce carbon footprint, increase resilience and help with the net zero strategy.

And before people start crying out about procurement of these low carbon technologies, this is where leadership and initiatives from the relevant ministries (Economy, Climate Change, Agriculture, Environment, etc) and entities such as Fiji Development Bank to develop and submit proposals to the many global mechanisms that have funds to support such sustainable development activities.

I believe our problem seems to be lack of innovation and thinking outside the box and adopting a holistic approach for real onthe ground actions from within the huge opportunities available to the Government.

ALTAUF CHAND Minto, NSW, Australia