Click on image for article page
Grace Road Food Company Limited has announced an ambitious target and goal to Government. This is to accelerate a full rice substitution in Fiji by 2020.
It said it would be achieved with areas it feels need to be looked into by Government.
These areas included education, land and infrastructure development.
This is to ensure that its goal, in line with decreasing our dependency on rice imports and reducing our import bill, with stakeholder input and support, be fulfilled.
The proposal took place during a recent visit by the newly-appointed Commissioner Central Meleti Bainmarama and his team.
The Korean Christian-based church/foundation that has undertaken perhaps one of the most progressive and a fast-tracked project as far as rice farming was concerned.
Feedback
The visit indicated that Mr Bainimarama and his team were impressed with the state-of-the-art agricultural machineries and the rice fields that were ready to be reaped for harvest.
Mr Kim said: “GRFC consists of three expert teams that are agriculture-team for research and development, construction team for infrastructure and managing-team for overseeing the entire company’s business.
Grace Road Food Proposal Includes:
- Education: There needs to be Fiji Government’s full cooperation in education over the agricultural practices.Also, government has to advertise the necessity of improvement of people’s diet and the importance of rice as a main meal.
- Land: There are many vacant lands that local mataqalis have lawful rights over. GRFC requests Fiji Government’s support from locating these vacant lands that can be converted to farmable lands all the way to signing a contract over these vacant lands.
- Infrastructure: Fiji Government’s support is needed in constructing infrastructures that are crucial in rice farming such as water channels.
Meleti Bainmarama said support and cooperation will rendered to Grace Road Food Company’s vision and the projects that the company is running.“We are ready to enhance Fiji’s rice farming status.”
He assured collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture to create a Task Forced Team (TFT).