Minister for Agriculture Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy has reiterated Fiji’s potential to be self-sufficient in rice seeing as our local conditions are suited for rice cultivation.

Hon. Reddy made these comments while handing over portable rice mills to farmers’ clusters in Vanua Levu recently.

“Fiji has the potential to produce all the rice that we require," he said.

“We have the potential to be self-sufficient in rice and all that we need to do is put our talent and focus our efforts on utilising all vacant land. If you travel towards Wainikoro and Bua, you will see large tracts of good available flat fertile land overgrown under the bush and we need to get back and get this land under production, I know that there are issues such as lease issues etc and we're working on those as well,” he said.

“But we are losing close to $44million every year to import rice from other countries like Vietnam, China, and India and we are very happy that we have seen major progress in rice production right from Bua to Wainikoro and Viti Levu, Rakiraki, Ba and these are the major rice-growing areas and we’re very encouraged.

Minister Reddy also shared that the production rate recorded this year was a telling indicator of the level of productivity throughout the country, highlighting that should this production trend be sustained, 100 percent self-sufficiency could be achieved within 10-20 years.

He also elaborated that Fiji had several advantages in rice planting with good weather conditions, soil structure and fertility, availability of land, technical skill, and a guaranteed local market.

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