Agric For PNG

The Agriculture sector in the Highlands Region  lacks sophistication and is dominated by subsistence farmers. Approximately a majority smallholder farmers with average farm sizes between 0.5-2 hectares currently produce 95% of the country’s food crops.

Further, as indicated , Papua New Guinea  faces increasing security challenges in the near future. This is due to the pervasively fragmented value chain, inefficiency and obsolete farming techniques and equipment in the sector.

The government must  target development in the region in order to breadbaskets to enhance productivity and production in selected food crops (maize and rice) and high value cash crops (horticultural products).
The Government must adapt the integrated approach to the agricultural sector  that is in line with the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) project.

This integrated approach recognizes that the transversal interventions or key constraints affecting the sector will have to be tackled simultaneously to produce a sustained result.

To modernize agriculture within the framework of structural transformation of the economy,  the government must take the following specific measures as well:

• Small Scale Farmers:  encourage our small scale farmers to adopt new and improved agricultural technologies and seeds, mitigate their over-reliance on rain-fed agriculture through irrigation, provide them with quality and affordable fertilizer and improve land tenure and acquisition.

Commercial Agriculture:  Encourage private sector investments into large-scale commercial agriculture

• Access to Land for Agriculture: We are committed to completion of the restructuring of the Land Title Registration and the Land Administration Projects to facilitate the efficient transfer of title and use of agricultural land.

• Finance:  Reform security in title to land to make it possible to extend the benefits of micro-lending and other forms of finance to ordinary farmers with limited capital and resources.

Infrastructure: Create more access roads to our farm-gates and market centres to mitigate post-harvest losses and ensure availability of foodstuff to consumers. Research and Extension services: We will build on our earlier effort to encourage the modernisation of agriculture through education, research and mechanisation.

Irrigation:  Intend to expand irrigation coverage develop and facilitate community-owned and managed facilities like dams, boreholes, and dugouts to expand irrigation.

• Mechanisation: Encourage the establishment of 250 mechanisation centres across the country to provide mechanisation services to farmers at competitive prices.

• Education, Research and Technology Development:  The Government must  restructure agricultural research institutions to build on the high yielding crop varieties and technologies already developed and provide greater support to farmers
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• Input support: The use of fertilisers is low, and less than 5% of farms in Highlands Region use any added nutrients of any kind, owing to cost and lack of easy availability.

• Agro Processing: Encourage and support agro-processing so that domestic production will compete with imports, with the aim of replacing imports over time and promote exports.

We can make it happen .