“Grow the key requirement for your family’s food security, in this way, rising food prices will have little effect on you and your family.”

This was the message reiterated by the Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy to rice farmers of Nadrala settlement in the upper valley of the Sigatoka River’s East Bank while handing over a portable rice mill to the farming cluster recently.

“All that we’re asking is that you grow the key requirement for your family’s food security, then the inflation that is happening doesn’t matter, whether the garlic or potato or food items go up in the supermarket, it doesn’t matter because your staple is rice, cassava, dalo, dhal that you’ve grown yourself,” said Minister Reddy.

“We want you to take over your key food requirement, that’s what we want, control over your key food requirements because, in that way, you won’t have to worry about your food security,” he added.

Minister Reddy revealed that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) had just released a report that highlighted the increasing price of food worldwide and that it was cause for concern, however, here in Fiji, this could be easily countered if production was increased.

“Every country is very worried that poor people will have difficulty in accessing food but we have our food security pretty much under our control. The only way to tackle food inflation is to produce more and make it accessible, if you produce less, farmers will be okay, but in the urban areas because there is less supply, the prices will go up,” he said.

“The only way to bring prices down is to push more vegetables and food in the market, that’s the only way and we are very fortunate that Fijian farmers have organized and mobilized themselves and we can see that food shortage is not an issue,” Hon. Reddy shared.

He also pointed out that even though food shortage may not be an issue, distribution along the supply chain was still a challenge in parts of the country stating; “Maybe there’s a distribution issue around the country, in some parts, maybe the food that we are producing in certain areas are not reaching certain areas and there may a little bit of a distribution issue, and if we find that there is a distribution issue, we will reach there and we will give them the planting material, the seeds and we will get them to grow,” he said. 

Accordingly, Minister Reddy said this would be done to ensure the two main elements of maintaining the country’s food security, which was accessibility and affordability, were achieved.

-Ends-

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