Cooperative societies offer more for agriculture development

COMMERCE and Industry Minister Wera Mori says cooperative societies offer the best model of agriculture development.
He said cooperative societies enabled people to plant cash crops, build retail stores and obtain credit to finance business activities.
The office received K500,000 from the Treasury Department out of the K1 million budgeted for.
He said they always faced land problems when trying to revive coffee and cocoa plantations especially in the Highlands.
“We must look at an appropriate model to address and mitigate that. And that is the co-operatives.
“Using national plantation management schemes will not work. The co-operative model is the best and must be applied.”
Mori said the agriculture sector particularly the coconut industry had to learn a lot from the success stories of the New Britain Palm Oil Ltd.
“NBPOL has already got the marketing chain right throughout Europe,” he said.
“How is that for a success story?
“So we need to also use the same chain that NBPOL has got. We can ask them to help us do so with coconut oil.
“So we should not give so much limelight to the extractive industries. Agriculture is the backbone (of the economy). We talk about agriculture but we are not putting money where our mouth is.”