The Ministry of Agriculture recently distributed an additional 16 portable rice mills to rice farming clusters in Vanua Levu to further incentivize these farming communities into upscaling rice production.

The distribution of portable rice mills also addresses the issue of a lack of milling facilities available to the farmers and directly resolves transportation costs borne by the farmer during rice milling.

While distributing the portable rice mills to the farmers this week, Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy said the Ministry was well aware of the issues and difficulties faced by farmers, reiterating that the Ministry was addressing these binding constraints.

“During the last two years when we were promoting rice, we noticed that farmers who were growing rice for their consumption or growing rice but wanted to keep some for their consumption, for them, milling was an issue, where would they mill the rice,” he said.

“Farmers had to travel long distances to look for a rice miller and sometimes when they reached there, they found that the house was locked and the mill was locked and they had to come back again and they spent a lot of money to hire a truck or van and that discouraged them from growing their rice and noting those concerns, we sought assistance from our development partners and got some assistance and we are now giving out portable rice mills so that you can mill your rice,” said Hon. Reddy.

“So this is indeed a very exciting day because you now don’t have to travel long distances. For these rice mills, for your information, one tin of rice to mill is $0.70, $0.40 to go to the homeowner, and $0.30 to go for maintenance. So we’re very excited that this incentive will result in a major boost in rice production.

Meanwhile, Vuniroro Rice Farmers Cluster president Mohammed Hasnain Hussein has thanked the Ministry for always keeping the best interests of farmers at heart and for providing the necessary assistance to all farmers.

“We are very happy today that we have received that rice mill for our group to do rice milling and we thank the Ministry of Agriculture for helping us and our community is very happy because before we had to go very far to Vunimoli and we were charged $40.00 a bag of rice but now our community is very happy,” said Mr Hussein.

“Government is doing a very nice job and we are happy and we will for sure, grow more rice,” Mr Hussein added.

The Ministry of Agriculture handed over a portable rice mill to the Koronasau Rice Farmers Cluster, Vuniqari Rice Farmers Cluster, Tabia Highway Rice Farmers Cluster, Naseva Rice Farmers Cluster, Solove Rice Farmers Cluster, Lalakoro Rice Farmers Cluster, Korokalou Rice Farmers Cluster, Vunimako Rice Cluster, Kaubulabula Rice Farmers Cluster & Cooperative, Soasoa Rice Farmers Cluster, Wasavulu Rice Farmers Cluster, Naduna Rice Farmers Cluster, Naceva Rice Farmers Cluster, Rualago Rice Farmers Cluster, Raravou Rice Farmers Cluster and Vuniroro Rice Farmers Cluster respectively.  

The portable rice mill is part of the European Union-funded Pro-Resilient Fiji project which is implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support the Ministry of Agriculture’s wider aim to ensure food and income security for Fijian farmers.

-Ends-

• ← Go to all Press Releases