All sugarcane and vegetable farmers nationwide are being urged to help reduce the country’s rice import bill by allocating at least one acre of their land to plant rice.

This was the call made by Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy while officially handing over a portable rice mill each to two rice farming clusters in Rewasa, Rakiraki and in Benai, Ba on the outskirts of Koronubu this week.

Minister Reddy stressed the value of Fiji’s rice import bill was staggeringly high, standing at $41million, with farmers having the opportunity to contribute towards increasing Fiji’s foreign reserves by growing rice for their own consumption or as a cash crop.

“Since this is a sugarcane growing area, I said it would be best if every farmer allocated one acre of land to grow rice.

“At the moment, we are importing $41million worth of rice, mostly from Vietnam. 84% of rice is imported and we are only producing 16% of it in Fiji and I see no reason why we cannot reverse this figure and produce 84% here and import the remaining,” he said.

Minister Reddy talked about past Government initiatives that were implemented to increase rice production like irrigation schemes which were now too costly to maintain along with rice schemes that had eventually failed due to dwindling farmer participation and declining rice cultivation.  

Minister Reddy said the type of rice that was currently being promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture was rain-fed and short-term rice varieties.

“What we have now decided is to promote rain-fed and the 100-day short-term rice variety, we no longer promote the long-term varieties and if anyone is growing the traditional variety, you will have to grow it at your own expense as we will not be providing assistance for the traditional variety nor will we provide the rice harvester because the harvester is not meant for the larger rice plant.  

“We’re very pleased to see rice expanding in Rakiraki and Ba, they have taken the lead and as a Ministry, we want to thank you all, we’ve made substantial gain as Government is concerned about two things, food security and the amount of money being drained outside of the country due to rice imports,” said Hon. Reddy.

Minister Reddy has also encouraged all communities to set up communal rice plots and is urging all farmers to set aside land to plant rice in the hopes of greatly reducing current rice import bills and achieving self-sufficiency in rice production.

Benai Rice Farmers’ Cluster representative Rajeshwar Singh said all the farmers within the area would benefit from the portable rice mill assistance.

“I want to thank the Ministry, the Minister Hon. Mahendra Reddy, Assistant Minister Hon. Viam Pillay and all agriculture staff for continuing to support all farmers, we are all very proud to receive this portable rice mill and I do believe that each and every farmer that is part of our rice cluster in Benai will benefit from it.”

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