SOE an opportunity to discuss food security: Exec

THE Covid-19 state of emergency is an opportunity for the Government and stakeholders to seriously discuss food security.
Farmers and Settlers Association president Wilson Thompson said PNG needed to keep supply chains for food products flowing to the people to mitigate the risk of public outrage if there was panic buying that would lead to food shortages.
Thompson said it was a time where food and agriculture 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, among others, had to work together.
“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, especially if this pandemic extends beyond months such as seen overseas,” he said.
“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.
“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.
“Mainland Holdings, Zenag Chicken and CLTC (Christian Leaders Training College) breed and distribute the day-old chicken 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 24/7 business, it does not stop.
“Apart from individual farmers, the out grower farmers in Morobe raise the chickens to deliver to the processing companies.
“If PNG cannot get feed in to the farms, our major producers like Mainland and Zenag would kill over one million chickens and this will take 12 to 18 months to get production back up and cheap protein into the PNG market.”