Fiji: state will assist pineapple effort

The Government will provide assistance to farmers in the Northern Division who want to plant off-season pineapple for local and overseas markets. Lagi Qicatabua, a sixth former and deputy head girl of the school, attended the festival with teacher Alumeci Francis. Ms Francis said there was a Mondialogo Celebration held at the school last year.

Mondialogo is an intercultural dialogue and the schools contest allows students to be aware of other peoples culture, she said. Lagi said at the celebration last year, she submitted a report on mondialogo and was chosen to represent the region at the Youth Festival in Germany. I was the only one from the Pacific and I had a lot of fun because it was a totally different experience with the culture, she said.

We went on July 1 and returned on July 12 (Wednesday). Ms Francis said there were a lot of activities organised during the World Youth Festival and one of that was frog leaping. She said the participants came together and started frog leaping and it was an attempt of sorts to beat the frog leaping record in the Guinness Book of Records.

There were six winners from the all over the world for the Mondialogo celebrations and they were from Senegal, Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, Dominican Republic and Fiji. These six were youth ambassadors and they addressed a crowd of about 2000 people during the closing ceremony of the festival, she said.

While a few farmers in the division have started experimenting with the help of Ministry of Agriculture officials, others have been encouraged to utilise their land well. The agriculture officer for Macuata, Binesh Shukul said there was a huge potential for growing pineapples in Vanua Levu due to the availability of land and manpower. He said the soil type and climate in Macuata was favourable for growing pineapple, which was selling locally for $1 a fruit.

Mr Shukul said pineapples were currently grown by at least 130 farmers in Macuata West and part of Bua in Nasarawaqa. He said the most common off-season pineapple smooth cayenne could be grown from June to September.

"Pineapple could be one of the good commodities under the Alternative Livelihood Project programmes for which marketing strategies are streamlined for local and export markets," Mr Shukul said. "Recently a New Zealand investor showed interest in venturing into marketing of Fiji pineapples.

"He has already made several visits to Seaqaqa Research Station to see the different varieties that can be grown from suitable ways of marketing either as fresh, pouched, peeled or vacuum packed. "The Agriculture Marketing Authority is also looking into the possibility of buying pineapples from Vanua Levu during the main season," said Mr Shukul.

He said the Government would provide seeds and small farming implements to farmers who wanted to start afresh on barren land. Mr Shukul said a lot of land which was lying idle, could be used by farmers. He said in years to come pineapple would become a popular export commodity.

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