Rabuka suggests alternative crops to replace sugarcane for export

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has highlighted some alternative crops that could replace sugarcane and says before Fiji focused on exporting sugar, there used to be quite a variety of other crops, even processed for the export market.

Rabuka says some varieties of yams, particularly the smaller pure native species like taniela leka, vurai, and niu madu, pot-sized yams that can be grown easily in machine-prepared fields, yielding much greater tonnage per acre and attracting much higher incomes, can easily be developed to replace acres under cane.

He says it would be more attractive to prepare the fields for a few years to remove traces of fertilisers, weedicides, and pesticides to get organic certifications for the world market.

The Prime Minister says farmers can also be encouraged to start preparing banana fields.

He says we now know the flood-prone areas and need to avoid them or build up more resilience in our climate funding-funded programs.

Rabuka believes Fiji bananas are still the best bananas in the world, and we should also aim at producing organically and improve our biosecurity protection to prevent our crops from being compromised by invading disruptive organisms.

He further says there used to be a beef canning factory, ‘Tova Beef,’ in Tailevu North and Fiji can develop beef cattle ranches to produce beef for export or process it for canneries, also for export.

The Prime Minister says we can start with the Pacific Islands Forum countries as Fiji’s export destinations and import from them what they have plenty of, like fish and marine products.

Rabuka stresses that Fiji needs stronger watch-keeping with biosecurity gates, at sea ports and airports to protect Fijian products.

He says Fijian pineapples are among the naturally sweetest in the world, and there used to be a canning factory in Lautoka during the colonial era which can be revived.

The Prime Minister has also highlighted that on his flight from Germany to San Francisco on Sunday, they served mostly fruits that do not grow in Fiji, while Fiji Airways served very little of the fruits that grow naturally in Fiji.