New policy to help farmers sell cash crops overseas

By LEMACH LAVARI
A new Government policy will help Papua New Guinea farmers to sell their cash crops to overseas markets, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Wera Mori.
The Bio-Security Policy will make sure agricultural food products meet quarantine inspection standards of export markets.
Mori made the announcement on Thursday in Port Moresby.
“We will soon develop a Bio-Security Policy for all our export food products to find markets in Australia, New Zealand and Asia,” he said.
Mori told The National the policy would ensure that PNG has Australian and New Zealand standard food quarantine services.
He said this would enable cash crops such as taro, sweet potato and fresh vegetables to find export markets.
“I will initiate bilateral discussions with the New Zealand government to assist in developing the legislative framework,” Mori said.
He said his department would seek to convert 85 per cent of subsistence agriculture into commercially-viable commodities.
Mori said the policy was aimed at ensuring benefits to farmers.
He said the policy would ensure the agriculture sector increased its contribution to the country’s exports.
“Approximately 70 per cent of the export market is made up of the resource sector,” he said.
“We should work to decrease it by 30 per cent by year 2030.”
Mori said he would push for export-driven agricultural cooperative societies.
He said the initiative would ensure land tenure issues were addressed to free up commodities such as coffee, copra, cocoa and vanilla.