Agriculture sector should be supported

THE country’s money plan has been announced with focus on revenue.
The economic sector in the 2019 plan received K742 million.
This sector includes agriculture, mining and other natural resource industries.
The last budget, the Economic sector received the highest increase of 72 per cent from K385.7 million in the supplementary budget to a whooping K665.9 million.
It is common knowledge that PNG’s economy has gone through a bust and boom cycle for quite a while, largely because we over-depend on one sector – the resources sector. And it has helped Papua New Guinea well.
With a booming mining sector over the last quarter century along with existence of oil and hydro-carbons, many lost sight of what the land can produce instead choosing to focus on what can be extracted from its depths.
One cannot deny that agriculture small businesses are the backbone of growth in production, employment and innovation.
Papua New Guineans have worked the land for their subsistence over thousands of years.
The people who first inhabited the island of New Guinea developed methods to till and irrigate their soil and to live off the bounty while hunting and gathering was still the most common method of surviving for people in other parts of the world.
At independence the country had among its chief exports coffee, copra, cocoa and tea.
These cash crops were one of the first means for the people to make their own revenue and take part in the local economy.
The agriculture sector needs to be consistent and adequate funding so it attracts those who are currently unemployed in cities and towns to return home and work the land.
And it makes sense that there is potential in this sector.
If we put cocoa, copra and other commodities, we can create a heaven on paradise.
At the same time, government and industry need to conduct more research “to gain a more nuanced understanding of consumer perceptions.
The fishing industry is another area where the country gains revenue from but in terms of having the most involvement by the people – agriculture, and its related industries, is the obvious foundation on which this country’s economy should be based on.
Other agricultural products have since increased their presence and importance. Sugar and oil palm are now two of the country’s major industries. Although sugar is produced for domestic sale other industries have shot off the Ramu cane fields. Small beef industry is up and running with cattle being tended to supply the local market.
This livestock opportunity is not lost on another major oil palm producer in West New Britain running a similar venture.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s the growth and production of vanilla beans became a lucrative enterprise after the world’s leading producer Madagascar had most of its crop wiped out by disease and bad weather.
The truth is the government should be doing more to support local agriculture because this is the only industry that can directly benefit the rural communities.
Through agriculture the people literally hold their own destinies in their hands.
There needs to be a paradigm shift back to the land as it was seen in pre-independence times, when agriculture was seen as the substratum that the economy could be built on.