Agriculture will remain backbone of our country

 PAPUA New Guinea faces a critical period with the looming El Nino disaster.

We will face severe shortage of food since our agriculture sector has not significantly evolved past subsistence farming. 

I can remember the 1997 drought when government officials came with relief supplies of bags of rice and flour to our villagers.

I was a small boy back then so didn’t care much about what drought was about. Primary and high schools were suspended due to lack of water and boarding students had to be sent home to their families.

For the children it was awesome to have prolonged holidays as there was more time to fish and dive in the sea, scavenge for dry coconuts or raid tapioca from people’s gardens. 

Despite those challenges, our people were resilient and managed to cope in the face of adversity. Eighteen years later, our population has increased to from five to eight million with more resource projects and logging operations. 

Amid our so-called economic boom, the progress of our agriculture sector still remained at a snail’s pace with lack of funding and no capacity in research and development.

All these minerals and forests that are been extracted without downstream processing will dwindle down to nothing.

One day we will become beggars on the streets with no land to farm while slaving for corporate giants within the food industry. 

Is this the future we want?

Jacob Manase, Via email