Food vital during lockdown

In light of the effects of the coronavirus in the world, president of Farmers and Settlers association WILSON THOMPSON highlights the importance of securing our food security, accessibility and prices

THE health, safety and security of the people of Papua New Guinea is paramount and the 14 days shutdown is commended so that our health risks can be assessed.
Food is a basic need.
There is a myth that PNG has abundance of land and food including access to it.
In fact it’s quite contrary.
People on the coast may have marine produce but also face shortage of sago, kaukau, taro etc or other protein sources.
In the Highlands, people look after pigs but these are often slaughtered on special occasions and do not cater for daily protein requirements.
The country is been subjected to various incursions by pest and diseases that ultimately caused havoc on agricultural production and threatening food security and export revenue.

The bio-security threats and the current coronavirus poses a major risk to the majority of the people of PNG, who rely on agriculture and livestock, where 85 per cent of the people engage as smallholder farmers by using 97 per cent of total land area being customary.
We are concerned that at the present time, many countries or our trading partners have established own protocols on movement of transport into their ports.
Some have restrictions for 30 days or more or less while in PNG it is for 14 days.
Last week, parliament extended the state of emergency (SOE) for two months.
We call upon the government to look beyond the health aspect and the security and law and order issues during the SOE period to assess our own food security issues.
This is the perfect opportunity to assess where certain fruit, vegetables and livestock and fish products are available and who is buying them and moving to the consolidation sheds or sold directly to markets.
This is the opportunity for our relevant agencies to upscale their work and start working with our established agricultural companies and processors such as Zenag Chicken, Mainland Holdings, NKW Group of Companies, Rumion Piggery and Prima and Lae Biscuit, Paradise Foods, Vitis, IPI Catering Innovative Agriculture and Ramu Industries, Anitua and IPI Catering etc.
The SOE is also an opportunity to nurture our local farmers and our local industries.
There is no import ban on livestock and fresh food but countries are worried about their own people and PNG must be conscious of this, if this pandemic extends beyond months such as seen overseas.
The SOE may look to restrict movements and that may seem so but it’s also opportunity for people to move back into their vegetable plots, coffee, cocoa, coconut plots and work in self-isolation and also keeps people busy and away from crowded areas.
We must note that we do not have big farms and most of our fresh fruit and vegetables and livestock and meat products are already produced in isolation or social distancing.
For example, the protein and nutrition requirements for majority of our people has been the poultry industry.
Most people in both coastal, inland and highlands villages now look after poultry that supplies chicken meat and eggs as a low-cost high protein food.
It is now part of a staple diet. It is important to PNG in providing food security, stability, rural employment and SME farmers with an income.
For example, Mainland Holdings, Zenag Chicken and CLTC breed and distribute the Day Old Chicken (DOC) around the country and it is seen in almost every corner of the country, mostly by plane and a day trip.
The PNG Poultry industry is a 24 hour/7 day a week/52 weeks a year business, it does not stop.
Apart from individual farmers, the out grower farmers in Morobe raise the chicken to deliver to the processing companies that are packaged and supplied around the country.
If PNG cannot get stock feeds in to the farms, our major producers such as Mainland and Zenag would kill over 1,000,000 chickens and this will take 12 to 18 months to get production back up and cheap protein into the Papua New Guinea market.
The same would apply to piggeries etc.
PNG should plan for the inevitable meaning we could move to code red either by threats in the country or by restrictions with our trading partners.
Stock feed would be a problem for our livestock sector so as well as rice and other inputs required in the food processing sector.

PNG needs to keep supply chains for food products flowing to the people to mitigate the risk of public outrage if there is panic buying that leads to food shortages.
It is also important that DOC get out to the SME (small to medium enterprise) farmers throughout the country.
Again, cash flow into the villagers and food security in their own communities.
We need to keep stores open; this will help maintain public calm/order.
Maintaining essential services are important to government (ie food security, public calm, public health, economic stability etc).
As observed in Australia, Europe and throughout the world, maintenance of food supply chains is critical for mitigating public panic during the pandemic.
It is paramount that PNG heed this global lesson in its own management response.
In coordination with the PNG government the livestock (poultry and piggery) industry will contribute to the food security of our nation.
However, to do so, we need the government’s assistance to maintain the following essential basic services to support our very small but essential agriculture companies.
Key essential basic service providers that are to support the agriculture and food processing industry is to allow controlled but targeted:

• SHIPPING lines;
• WHARFAGE and handling;
• National Agriculture and Quarantine Inspection Authority) for bio-security;
• Customs;
• Utilities providers such as PNG Power, Telikom, bmobile, Digicel;
• Department of Transport and Works to keep sea, air and roads open; and,
• Domestic cargo flights and land transport for farm inputs and finished products to the retailers and at least retailers or food outlets to reduce panic.

Certain aspects of our primary sector such as livestock (poultry industry), meat and fish canning, sugar processing, cooking oil and rice needs to be recognised as an essential food industry essential to the country by promulgation in emergency regulations so that it will continue to operate to cater for the food security needs of the country.