The Fijian Government is committed to improving the productivity at the farm level and extending the production of seasonal crops.

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

Hon. Reddy stated that the irrigation kits were being handed over to the farmers as part of an intergovernmental approach between his line Ministries to provide the necessary support and leverage to farmers to boost their productivity levels.

“The primary objective of this irrigation set is to raise your farm productivity and to also allow you to extend your production in seasons or periods where there is less rainfall.

“By doing so, you will be able to increase your farm income, increase productivity, and secondly, you will also be able to push production so that price variations will be minimized,” he said.

Minister Reddy shared that the Ministry of Agriculture’s primary objective was to get agriculture to grow, highlighting the linkages between the tourism sector and the agriculture sector.

“The tourism sector has opened up again and we are pushing the tourism sector to buy from within Fiji, instead of us losing money through the importation of vegetables so we need to expand production, and when we talk to them, they say that during the off-season, it is difficult to get vegetables so that’s why we are now promoting these programmes like irrigation and hydroponics etc,” he said.

Meanwhile, Toge vegetable farmer and recipient Ponipate Kato said the irrigation kit would ease his water access now.

"My water source is quite far from my farm, the river is where I get my water for my farm from and with this irrigation kit, it won’t be too physically tiring to fetch water for my vegetables, so I want to thank government for this big assistance to me," said Mr. Kato.

For Mr. Rupeni Naisua of Nailaga village who plants assorted vegetables and crops, the irrigation kit assistance would help to boost their production.

"We now have greater plans to source our crops to the tourism market as highlighted by the Minister and we’re also very grateful to the Minister and the Ministry for this irrigation kit because our water source was a very big problem for us, we had to dig out a makeshift well whenever the time was right because installing a borehole is an expensive exercise but now, we can source direct from the river to our farms, thank you very much, thank you," said Mr. Naisua.

Nine farmers from within the provinces of Ra and Ba and the district of Tavua were awarded their full set of irrigation kits worth approximately $1,000.00 which was funded under the Ministry of Waterways and Environment Irrigation Support for Farm Development Programme.

Each farmer receives one Jetland 6.5 horse power 2-inch water pump, 8 meter 2-inch suction hose and 200 meter 2-inch discharge hose and 100 meter 2-inch soaker hose (irrigation hose).

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