Picture: Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy with the recipients of the irrigation kits.

The food security objective of any country is the task delegated to the Government through the Ministry of Agriculture, and protecting the food security of all households remains one of its most critical objectives.

This was relayed by Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy to farmers of Tavua who were recipients of irrigation kits from the Ministry of Waterways and Environment recently.

“For any country, one of the critical objectives for the country is to ensure households can get an adequate amount of food to consume, it is called the food security objective, for any country at any time, whether it is a pandemic, or during times of war, or normal times, we want every household to have adequate food and nourishment, apart from shelter, clothing, housing, the most important need is food for the people.

“During the pandemic, we rose up and mobilized the entire country to grow their own food, when the tourism sector was closed and the commercial sector was pretty much closed, we got our farmers to get into the field, not only to feed their households but to provide food for the entire households in Fiji in the urban areas,” he said.

“And today, as we are out of the pandemic, it is my duty to take out time on behalf of the Government to thank all the farmers in this country who rose to the challenge and provided food to the entire country,” he added.

Hon. Reddy also praised the efforts of all commercial farmers who had rallied behind the Ministry to push exports during those turbulent times of the pandemic, contributing effectively to the agricultural sector's contributions to the country’s gross domestic product by becoming one of Fiji’s leading export earners.

“I also want to thank all the commercial farmers who rallied behind us to push exports and today, agriculture exports are one of the leading export earners for Fiji. Sugar exports have been doing well but apart from sugar, non-sugar agricultural exports have surpassed sugar, the first time was in 2020 and last year, we went up further to $121million, which is a remarkable achievement.

“Now we want the growth of agriculture, not only to be possible, through expansion but also through productivity gain, we want productivity gain, efficiency gain to push agriculture growth and today we are here to give you support and leverage which will allow you to gain increases in productivity, from the same area of land, from the same crop but more output through irrigation technology,” said Minister Reddy.

Meanwhile, irrigation kit recipient Mr Rajendra Raghlu of Yaladro Flats expressed his gratitude and thanks to the Ministry of Agriculture as Tavua was one of the most drought-prone areas in the Western Division.

“Tavua is one of the most drought-stricken areas in this corridor and we the farmers in Tavua have experienced this year in, year out, and this year, it was always this way, some way or the other.

“Most people here in Tavua are dependent on agriculture and I know this assistance will benefit us because the weather patterns are changing, we were fed up with this continuous rain until last week, and within a week we were already experiencing droughts on the low soil profiled areas, the drought was emerging and we’ve just received a little bit of rain again which we consider to be a blessing and I know that the irrigation kit will boost our production to another level,” said Mr Raghlu.

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