The Nanukuloa Agriculture Station in Saivou, Ra which was heavily damaged during Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016 was yesterday commissioned by the Minister for Agriculture Hon. Dr. Mahendra Reddy.

Speaking at the commissioning of the office and staff quarters, Minister Reddy said it was important to rebuild and ensure appropriate infrastructure was provided to officials to offer the best service to the farmers of Ra province.

“Infrastructure to support our staff must be provided of appropriate quality and we’re grateful to the Ministry of Economy for sourcing the funding to assist construct the two buildings, so we acknowledge the Ministry of Economy for assisting us in renovating and constructing the building and I want to assure the community here in Nanukuloa, that we are here to support you and provide the correct advice to ensure that your agriculture produce is protected, your effort is protected, and you are able to prosper.

“Whenever there is a shock to the economy, whether it is an external or internal shock, we learn a lot. TC Winston was a shock that affected the entire nation, almost half the population of Fiji was affected by TC Winston and most of the agriculture sector was affected, along with this, it affected our infrastructure,” he said.

“We lost output, infrastructure, we had to divert Government’s budget to fix the infrastructure and it took us time but also with that particular shock we were able to build resilience amongst our communities and it is very important that we build resilience amongst our communities because shocks which are beyond our control, we cannot predict it, particularly shocks related to climate change such as severe tropical cyclones, flooding, earthquakes,” Minister Reddy added.

He urged farmers of Ra to prioritize their farms as a business and to take full advantage of the Ministry of Agriculture’s services to ensure their livelihood.

“We want to foster ahead with large scale commercial farming, we have supported for so long smallholder farming but we need to create surplus and need to move now towards mechanizing agriculture and we’re doing everything possible to introduce mechanization in agriculture,” he said.

“We need to push the frontier and in order to do that, we need to source an increase in production through productivity gains, through efficiency gains, and production of new technologies.

The total construction cost of the new Nanukuloa Agriculture Station office and triplex staff quarters was $833,502.00.

-ENDS-

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