Minister for Agriculture and Waterways, Dr. Mahendra Reddy says he has been fully briefed by the Minister for Economy on the status of Fiji’s economy and they know how the 2020/2021 National Budget will pen out.
The 2020/2021 National budget will be delivered by the Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at 7.30pm next Friday.
Dr. Reddy says as we are now living in extraordinary times, they are planning to re-look at their strategies on how they can work smartly to achieve the same objectives in the next financial year.
However, Dr. Reddy has assured that all initiatives announced by the Ministry of Agriculture earlier this year will continue.
Ministry of Agriculture was allocated $78.7 million in the 2019-2020 Budget.
A major focus is expected to be put on those farmers who are members of the fully-managed commercial farms that have contracts with Fiji Agro Marketing as government has already announced plans regarding food security and agriculture growth plan for the country.
Last month saw a major inroad where it was revealed that imported produce like carrots and celery will now be planted in the 125 acres of Nubu farms and the 42 farmers who will be farming in this land will also grow traditional Fijian staples like duruka and dalo.
With the Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama already highlighting that not all the food that tourists want to eat is grown locally in commercial quantities, funding is expected to be driven towards planting of items like carrots and celery for Fiji to become self sufficient. Fiji imported over $5.4 million worth of carrots and over $1.8 million worth of celery last year.
In addition to this, government is also expected to continue providing initiatives to increase rice farming where the Ministry of Agriculture is already providing rice seeds up to 30kg (for 1-acre farms) to every sugarcane farmer.
Dr. Reddy says they will also be providing rice seeds up to 30kg to every non-sugarcane farmer and will also assist them to mill their rice for home consumption by providing small portable rice mills close to their area when rice paddy is ready for milling.
They will also provide rice seeds to all 1,100 villages for community based rice farming.
The seeds will be provided following a signed commitment by the village Turaga-ni-Koro and the amount of rice seed to be provided will be equivalent to the population size of the village.
In 2019, Fiji imported $42.6m worth of rice.
Dr. Reddy says the Ministry Agriculture also has an objective to increase production and productivity for goat, sheep, beef and dairy products in Fiji.
He says they are establishing new breeds for cattle, goats, and sheep to be given out to farmers and these new breeds will replace the low yielding breeds which have lost their original genetic traits due to inbreeding over time.
Meanwhile, 33,000 families have received the seed packages from the Agriculture Ministry’s Farming Response for Backyard Gardening Package.
The Ministry will restart the seed distribution initiative for backyard farming at the end of September this year.
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