Farmers from four villages along Sigatoka’s East Bank are being urged to grow high-value crops with lucrative export markets to enable them to fully capitalize on current market signals.

With Fiji’s non-sugar agriculture export earnings raking in $121.3million in 2021, it was vital for farmers to identify relevant marketable crops to grow that was suitable to their local conditions.

This was reiterated by Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy to farmers of Nawamagi, Naroro, Nadrala and Narata while handing nursery materials, planting materials and improved pig varieties to each of the four villages recently.

Minister Reddy highlighted the country’s leading agricultural commodities such as kava, dalo, turmeric, ginger and horticultural crops (vegetables) together with poultry products which were being exported to some countries within the Pacific, stating that the onus was on them as a predominantly subsistence farming community to take the next step.

“This country’s growth and development is primarily because of agriculture.”

“Agriculture has contributed to the growth and development of this country through the utilization of land for farming, labour, and onwards to agri-entrepreneurship, as well as technical advice from Government has made all this possible,” said Hon. Reddy.

“We grew on the back of the cotton industry, copra industry, and then sugar, all these were the dominant commodity at some point in time and now it is dalo, cassava, yaqona and ginger and turmeric, so as you can see, over time the importance of crops has changed. In the early days, cotton was very important which then changed to copra and which subsequently changed to sugar but now sugar is going down and new crops are coming up and that is how the agriculture sector works,” he explained.

“There is huge potential and we think that you also can join this export equation by planting kava, and turmeric that we are promoting here, as well as dalo because you’ve got the resources, all we ask is that you utilise your resources in a manner that will not degrade its quality,” he said.

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