Picture: Minister for Agriculture Dr Mahendra Reddy with the rice farmers in Nadi.

Aligning national priorities towards achieving self-sufficiency in rice production is paramount for the country to guarantee our food security concerning rice.

While handing over portable rice mills to rice farming clusters in and around the Nadi District this week, Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy said there was a need for a national movement of farmers to ‘Rice Up’.

“We’re here to promote rice, we’re calling on every farmer, whether you're a sugarcane, dalo or cassava farmer, irrespective of your major commodity, continue to grow it, but what we are asking is for you to keep aside at least half an acre of your land to grow rice for your consumption.

Theoretically, Minister Reddy explained that from half an acre of rice, a farmer could harvest 500kg of rice paddy, which would yield 300kg of milled rice, which roughly equated to 30 ten kilogram bags of rice, which enough to meet the staple food requirements of an average household.

“I don’t think you buy 30 bags of rice from the supermarkets unless you’re a big household with 10-20 members, then maybe you may be consuming more so we’re saying that if you’re wanting to grow rice just for your family consumption then half an acre is enough, but then if you allocate that same half acre and you plant rice twice on that same piece of land, you will get 60 bags of rice, so you don’t have to buy that from the supermarket and you don’t have to worry about what the price of rice is in the supermarket,” he theorized.

Hon. Reddy clarified that some forty years ago, Fiji was 75 per cent self-sufficient in rice but due to deregulation which encouraged the importation of rice into the country, this led to the drastic downfall of the rice industry. 

“We’re saying that we need to go back to where we were 40 years ago where most of the sugarcane farmers were growing their rice, we were at 75% self-sufficiency levels then, however, something happened, and farmers stopped planting rice. 

“But now we’re seeing a positive and massive response, which is very encouraging and promising for us, as a lot of farmers in Rakiraki, Tavua, Ba, and Vanua Levu are focusing their efforts on growing rice,” said Hon. Reddy.

He elaborated that the Ministry was now promoting the new variety of rice which could grow in 3-months, adding that the Ministry no longer promoted traditional 6-month rice varieties; “We’re not giving seeds for that, we are promoting short-term variety which doesn’t need heavy irrigation, it is rain-fed and you get 1 crop, easily, during the rainy season, but outside the rainy season, if it is prolonged, you can have the second crop but the third crop, you can have 3 crops but you might need to have irrigation. 

As part of the Ministry’s ‘We Rice Up’ campaign, it will provide the rice seeds, free of charge, to farmers, who are required to return the same quantity of rice planting material to the Ministry upon harvest. 

“When you harvest and dry it then you grow rice and when you harvest from less than 1-acre of rice, then we will give you a portable machine which you can fit to the brush cutter and harvest it or we can also provide you with a reaper but if you grow more than 1 acre, we will get you a harvester, you pay $28/hour and we will harvest your rice for you, it will harvest, break the rice, pack the paddy in the bag and you have your bags of rice paddy properly harvested and sealed in packs,” said Minister Reddy. 

“You just have to dry your paddy and have it ready to be milled,” he said.

“Whenever they are growing rice, we will bring these portable rice mills to you, what we only want is for you to grow your rice for your consumption. Just half an acre or even a quarter acre which can fetch you 15kgs of rice, so we are strongly promoting rice, there is no other way to deal with inflation or rising food prices other than growing your own food. 

Through the ‘We Rice Up’ campaign, the Ministry hopes to reduce the reliance on imported rice, which is approximately 80% of the total rice consumed locally and stands at $42million.

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