Engineers from China are in the country to set up the Fijian Government’s first feed mill at the Koronivia Research Station.
The mill is Government’s response to the plight of livestock farmers, who’ve had to put up with steep farm production costs exacerbated by the high costs of supplementary feed.
Local agricultural waste or by products for instance refuse from municipal markets and sugar cane tops will be processed and churned into feed pellets.
It will take Chinese engineers two weeks to set up the mill and another two weeks to train Ministry of Agriculture officials to operate it.
Ministry of Agriculture permanent secretary Lt. Colonel Mason Smith said the feed would be commissioned in the third quarter of the year.
“The mill will basically be able to produce feed for all kinds of livestock like ducks, goats, pigs, cattle and this will ensure that in times of drought and flooding that we have mill in store to be able to feed our livestock,” Lt. Colonel Smith said.
Local supply of feed will ease farmers production costs.
“We continue to import most of our feed mill from overseas – what we need to do it to look at our local ingredients – get it tested to ensure that the nutrition quality is there and then formulate the feeds,” he added.
The mill, falls under the Animal Health and Production Unit’s (AH&P) Livestock Feed Technology Programme that has been running for the past three years.
AH&P director Tomasi Tunabuna said the mill was a major achievement for Government in terms of providing a conducive environment for farming livestock.
“It is pretty expensive for farmers to buy imported feed and we find that most of the time if they use feed concentrate, the costs of feed makes up more than half the cost of operating the farm,” Mr Tunabuna said.
“The cost of imported feed chews up a lot of the farmer’s budget.
“In this situation the farmer cannot afford to buy enough feed for livestock to fully achieve maximum potential.
“It even restricts their financial ability to expand their farms beyond the small scale holder level.”
Farmers can expect to begin buying locally produced feed by mid-year.
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