Centre equips participants with rice farming, financial literacy skills

A NEWLY-built resource centre in Morobe has equipped 32 participants with basic rice farming and financial literacy skills as well as gender equality knowledge to work with their communities.
Danny Isaac, a gender equality and social inclusion specialist (GESI), said the five-day training would equip the graduates with knowledge to address gender equality and gender-based violence issues in their communities.
“These graduates are the first lot for this short course and already other community members have expressed interest to take part,” Isaac said.
He was speaking at the opening of Atupan Resource Centre on Friday in Markham, which also housed two new solar rice mill machines.
The training was sponsored by Trukai Industry Ltd and National Agriculture Research Institute (Nari) with Australian and Papua New Guinea government.
Markham MP and vice-minister for Agriculture and Livestock Koni Iguan attended the event with Nari director general Dr Sergie Bang and project manager Dr Sim Sar. Also present was Trukai agronomist Anton Beko other representatives from Farmset Ltd and members of the Morobe government.
“They will educate other members of their community, who have been marginalised or left out of participation in community projects such as this,” Isaac said.
“We want to involve everyone in the community and encourage equal participation to work together in agriculture sector and other sectors as well.
Beko told The National the participants received training in rice growing, harvesting and milling with food nutrition and security methods.
“That is to enable them to grow rice and control it for pest and other crop-related diseases,” he said.
“The most important thing is to have nutritious food first then sell it.”
Beko said the two solar rice mill would produce in a week around 60kg of white rice and 120kg of brown rice.
“The Atupan village and other nearby communities have 275 hectors of rice at Umi farm,” he said.