Picture: Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy with the rice farmers.

The production of rice in Fiji has seen steady growth following the injection of Government support through the Ministry of Agriculture’s rice development programmes.

While handing over portable rice mills to rice farmers’ clusters in the Western Division this week, Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy highlighted the steady growth rate of rice production in the country.

“At the moment, we are around 20 per cent self-sufficiency as compared to 3 years ago, when we were at 16% self-sufficiency, this is quite remarkable and we have done substantially well and I think we can really leap frog and increase production levels to another level.

“I want to congratulate all rice farmers in Fiji for supporting the Ministry’s quest to boost rice production, as you know, most of the rice that we consume, approximately 80 per cent we are importing mostly from Vietnam and we are losing out $42million per year by paying for the rice that is coming from outside and we want to save this money.

“Also, we are concerned that should something happen, say for example a trade embargo, then what will happen to our food security because nearly every household is consuming rice, there will be a major shortage of rice.

Minister Reddy said in this circumstance, the price of rice would become exponentially high and that was something Government wanted to avoid; “So to manage that, we need to at least produce 50% of the rice we consume here in Fiji and we can do that, now I’m convinced that we can do that in 5 years’ time to achieve this level of self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile, Rup Chand of Tavarau, Raviravi in Ba thanked the Ministry for encouraging farmers to grow more rice as it would contribute more to the country’s food security.

“Thank you very much for choosing Tavarau as a model farm showing the farmers right in front of their eyes what idle land, when used ideally can produce, and now that the machine has been donated, we no longer need to travel long distances to mill our rice and we can mill our rice right here,” he said.

“Thank you very much for coming down to us and sharing with us the information about the agriculture sector and motivating us by showing us the returns that can be generated by using idle land,” said Mr. Chand.

 -Ends-

• ← Go to all Press Releases