In his 2021-2022 Budget Response in Parliament last week, Minister Reddy said the budget would ensure that continued service delivery to farmers was maintained through the Ministry's targeted programmes.

Minister Reddy said it was prudent that the Land clearing / Land preparation programme had been allocated $500,000, which aimed to support clearing and preparation activities of newly acquired agriculture land to improve production. 

He also highlighted the increase in the Rice programme budgetary allocation in the new financial year would cater for seed production, the provision of Agro-Inputs, the provision of machines to farmers and land preparation that would develop 3,000hectares of rice land benefitting approximately 2,850 farmers with an anticipated production of 9,000metric tonnes costing $7.2million.

“Furthermore, the Coconut programme is allocated $150,000 to help promote Coconut farming in the Western Division through the provision of seed nuts to 50 farmers. Again, having a massive potential in this area, we will continue to expand on establishing coconut plantations.”

Dr. Reddy said the Mushroom Research and Development programme and the provision of $100,000 would enable trials on farmer’s fields, assessment of adaptability to different agro-climatic zone in Fiji and will see the introduction of new varieties of mushrooms.

“In the current financial year, 199 farmers or stakeholders were capacitated with training to grow mushrooms for food security and quick income generation in the West and 62 farmers were trained in the Central Division, this activity will continue in the next financial year targeting 200 farmers.

“Currently there are 1,700 mushroom farmers in Fiji, some of which are already practicing on a commercial scale supplying mushrooms to restaurants in the Western Division and New World and Extra Supermarkets,” he explained.

-ENDS-