Mission encouraging paddy rice cultivation

THE Taiwan Technical Mission continues to encourage paddy rice cultivation and taro planting for research and seedling purposes.
Located within the National Agriculture Research Institute (Nari) at 10-Mile in Lae, Taiwan Technical Mission works in partnership with Nari in various agricultural activities involving research and food security.
The paddy rice and taro-cultivation were two among activities it encouraged.
Last year, it harvested 130kg of paddy rice from its 1.5ha of land.
Field officer Mathias Dare said new rice seedlings would be planted after 14 days and would take about three months before harvesting.
Dare said that paddy-rice cultivation was introduced in 1991 as part of food security to enable subsistence farmers to plant their own rice for consumption apart from planting traditional crops like taro, banana, kaukau, potatoes and vegetables.
However, due to factors like negligence from provincial and district administrations to support local farmers with technical training and milling machines forced people to quit planting rice.
Even without proper milling machines, many local farmers have kept planting rice and resorting to using traditional “tong-tong” to grind their produce.
Dare said that they had land to plant taro and kaukau and a bigger piece of land for paddy rice.