Agriculture needs an overhaul

PUBLIC sector investment in agriculture has generally been low and inconsistent although ironically agricultural activities support a large majority of Papua New Guineans.
Agricultural activities, both formal and informal, are also the country’s largest employers and put money into the pockets of more people and households than any other sector.
Agriculture has contributed on average, in the five years up to 2016, 45 per cent of the GDP in PNG.
Translated into Kina, that represents about K3 to K4 billion.
In return, the sector gets less than K200 million in government support.
However, when it comes to the Government’s support for the sector and how the responsible department and its allied agencies are managed, it would make one wonder if the country is indeed serious about getting the best out of its primary produce.
The Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) has had frequent changes to its management and resource shortfalls.
It continues on with a legacy of under-performance and it is apparently unable to break free from that.
The problem of inadequate resources to the agriculture sector has been ongoing for years.
One expert said at a meeting in Alotau in 2017 that as far as investment and development in agriculture was concerned, we have been content with mediocrity.
The expert argued at the meeting of commodity board representatives and other civil servants then that the sector had not moved forward at all.
That was five years ago.
That there has been some improvement in government intervention over the past five years cannot be denied but much more remains to be done.
There have been some improvements to both government’s annual budgetary allocations for DAL.
The department under the current minister has made some commendable work so far.
Price support for a number of commodities especially has been an important intervention.
The Productive Partnerships in Agriculture Project (PPAP), which ran from 2011 to 2019 has contributed to better production and access to markets.
It was the single largest government project implemented with loan financing from the World Bank and International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).
The project involved rehabilitation of market access (a number of feeder roads) and partnering with the private sector value chain players to provide extension services to its farmers to improve quality and increase production and income.
The total project cost was approximately K303 million which was expanded over a decade.
Perhaps a few years from now, the full impact of the multi-million-kina project would be felt by the farmers directly benefitting from it as well as the country in terms of export earnings.
That is encouraging news.
What is not encouraging is fresh allegations of misuse by officials at the DAL.
Apparently, money intended for the Spice Board has been misspent on something else.
While that is already the subject of police investigations, it is simply unacceptable that this critical department is once again making news for the wrong reasons.
The expert referred to above had been assigned the task of driving reform in the agriculture sector to change the way things have been done over the years.
He had apparently stumbled upon an unyielding bureaucracy that resisted change either because it did not know any better or has been constrained by chronic resource shortfalls.
In this election candidates and political parties will again go out there to sell their policies on agriculture to the rural masses who have only their plots of land to provide for their every need.
It is an important election agenda for the voter to consider.