CIC badly needs a unifying strategy

IT is sad that the coffee industry, which supports more than 2.5 million people, still does not have a unifying strategy to get all stakeholders to play their part under the National Agriculture Development Plan (NADP) or have they lost the plot?
The Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) and other government agencies in the agriculture sector must work together and with the private sector to implement the NADP.
More often than not, many coffee farmers are left in the dark, and miss out on NADP funding.
Coffee production is on the decline all over the country.
Instead of talking about producing two million bags of coffee a year, we should first stop production from declining.
The CIC set the two million target for year 2000 and it failed.
What makes anyone think we can do it this time round? It is a fallacy.
Our priority should be to protect existing plantations and rehabilitate all coffee plantations.
It will require public support and funding which has been provided for in the NADP.
The National Coffee Plantation Rehabilitation Programme is a private sector initiative that is gaining support from a wide cross-section of the community and coffee stakeholders.
It is designed to grow the coffee industry with the farmers taking command of their destiny, using the “Farmer-Dominated-Group Extension Method”.
Farmers do not want hired management agencies.
The CIC needs to come clean with the management of farmers own money – the Coffee Stabilisation Fund.
It must also work with other government agencies and the private sector and not go out to “kill” new innovations it knows nothing about.
The CIC has been hiring foreign consultants who only run down the industry.
It is time the CIC listens to PNG’s own experts.
We are not expensive; we know what needs to be done and how to do it.

Jacob Taru
Via email