Increasing production, becoming self-sufficient target: Minister Reddy
FIJI’S agricultural sector, in the last few years, has increased production and reduced imports, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In highlighting the impact of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Direct Initiatives to Farmers in Parliament last week, Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Waterways, Dr Mahendra Reddy, highlighted that vegetable production increased at an average rate of 19.8 percent.
Furthermore, Minister Reddy said this in turn has led to reduced vegetable importation by 2.6 per cent in volume and 3.2 percent in value.
“First of all, to deal with the (COVID-19) pandemic and the fear of food insecurity, we provided seed packages to 238,599 households. These packages consisted of five individual seeds, the basic vegetables, such as, eggplant, tomatoes, cabbages and beans, so different packages will have different combination of five seeds pack,” he said.
Minister Reddy said on an average, 9,000 households per year benefitted from 2019.
“In that way, we were able to deal with lots of household members who lost their jobs and their food security was under threat. So, we really mobilised the entire urban households in Fiji and got them to start planting vegetables for their households.”
On the substantive crops being targeted to boost agricultural production, Minister
Reddy said they were looking at a few such as mushroom which has a niche market with the growing demand for mushroom by upper income households, tourism sector as well as export market
“We have to-date, trained 2,000 interested farmers in mushroom production, and we have established five commercial farmers in mushroom production.”
He said there was a commercial mushroom production outlet launched in Votualevu, Nadi and the outcome in the last three years, mushroom production had increased by 39.5 percent, with the total volume at the moment of 20 metric tonnes.
“Simultaneously, by doing that, we have reduced importation from 46 metric tonnes
in 2020 to 32 metric tonnes in 2021, with the value of $325,000 in 2020 down to $299,000 in 2021.”
Another crop was copra, Minister Reddy said, which remains one of the most traded commodities in the country and currently 25,000 farmers, with the support of the Ministry, are replanting and replacing the existing senile trees.
There were two dedicated research stations, the Mua Research Station and the Dobuilevu Research Station, he said, where the Ministry was establishing coconut seed nuts for distribution to farmers.
“As we speak, we are doing extremely well from 2019
to 2021. Fiji exported to New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia and other Pacific Island Countries fresh coconuts and coconut products worth $14.8 million, which is supported by nine percent growth in the coconut industry.”
The other crop, Minister Reddy said, that was being focused on not for exports but to reduce importation, was rice to increase Fiji’s self-sufficiency especially now that rice had become a staple diet for every Fijian household.
“Under our ‘We Rice Up’ Programme, we have supported farmers in the sugar industry by asking them to plant at least one acre of rice.”
“I must say that from 2019, we have made substantial inroads in increasing production. We have raised our self- sufficiency from 15 percent in 2019 to 17.5 percent in 2021, and for the volume of production this year, I have a feeling we would reach 22 percent of self-sufficiency by the end of this year,” he said.
Kava and dalo were the other two important crops.
“Kava production increased from 12,000 tonnes in 2019 to 14,000 tonnes in 2021. Last year, our export of kava was $42 million, the highest ever.”
“Dalo production increased from 51,000 tonnes in 2019 to 54,000 tonnes in 2021, with last year’s export being the highest