By SAMUEL KEHATSIN of NARI
PRODUCING agricultural produce to meet
the requirements of markets requires special attention and those involved need
to be equipped with the required skills.
This is exactly what a taro commercialisation
project in the East New Britain province is doing, ensuring taro growers under the
project are aware of the requirements involved in processing taro before
exporting them to major local urban markets or overseas.
Participants going through steps involved in field planting |
One of the newly-planted taro fields of the AIGS taro commercialisation project |
The project, funded through the
Agricultural Innovations Grant Scheme (AIGS) of AusAID, is conducting a series
of training for farmer trainers to educate farmers on the importance of the
various stages involved in processing taro to meet market demands and
quarantine requirements.
One such training was conducted last
week at the NARI Island Regional Centre at Keravat, attended by farmers and trainers
from various local level governments in the province.
The training, facilitated by staff of
the project, featured post-harvest techniques, selection of quality planting
materials, field planting techniques, chemical application and safety and storage.
Demonstrations were held to show the process involved from harvesting,
cleaning, grading, and packing of taro to meet export requirements.
Kiteni Kurika, a project staffer and one of
the facilitators, said that the biggest problem was the lack of support from
other agencies to see the beneficiaries of what the association was capable of
doing.
She added that it was a mammoth task, especially
when engaged in trying to export food crops like taro to overseas markets.
Kurika said her team was trying to
ensure quarantine issues and meeting market demand on a regular basis was
better understood by farmers.
Participants expressed that the training
was useful, saying they knew how to plant taro but to process taro to meet
requirements had been an eye opener.
Through
this project, taro growers in province have made a first shipment of taro to the
Pacific Adventist University and are already selling in the supermarkets of
Port Moresby.
East New Britain Women and Youth in
Agriculture Corporative Societies Association is already leading the way in
agriculture in the province and is calling for more support from government
agencies, NGOs, and the private sector in the province for them pursue this
further.
The association is now looking at the
LNG projects and other project sites, with options of exporting to New Zealand
also being considered.
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