Funds available to support citrus intervention programmes: Kombuk

By PETER ESILA
ABOUT K1 million is with the Fresh Produce Development Agency and another K1 million support from the agriculture price support and intervention programme for the citrus industry in the country.
Department of Agriculture and Livestock secretary Daniel Kombuk said there were about 5,000 citrus farmers.
He said it was encouraging to see companies such as City Pharmacy Ltd and Innovative Agro Industries (IAI) wanting to buy oranges, limes and mandarins from Jiwaka.
“In the next two weeks, the IAI will start buying citrus from Jiwaka from farmers and this is very encouraging because they will keep the farmers behind the farm gate,” Kombuk said.
“We have training materials from the certified citrus nursery in Jiwaka.
“Jiwaka Governor Dr William Tongamp has gone into agriculture with the nursery in Jiwaka to plant 100,000 hybrid citrus fruits every year by the Jiwaka provincial government, so farmers will be planting, it started in 2019.
“We planted 100,000, last year, another 100,000 this year and another 100,000 by end of 2022.
“We would have planted half a million citrus in Jiwaka.
“That will generate K720 million in Jiwaka from citrus alone.”
Kombuk said through Government funds, Department of Agriculture was supporting farmers.
“We are assisting small farmers who are growing, we are giving them K20,000, K30,000 to maintain their citrus or increase planting,” Kombuk said.
“So if we want to meet domestic market demands and for import replacement, we need to increase planting to sustain domestic market demand.
“Like if CPL wants to get it, we must maintain consistency and quality, otherwise companies will lose faith in us.
“Jiwaka is the biggest citrus nursery certified through Israeli and American standards for farmers to acquire their training materials for commercial production.
“We distributed 1,000 citrus seedlings in East Sepik recently.
“We have established the citrus generic resources material in two villages in Buka already.
“We have established some collection in South Fly, Middle Fly and North Fly in Western and now they are coming into very heavy production,
“Before last week, we brought 650 seeds to Rabaul and last week 1,500 seeds to in East New Britain.”