“I want to implore all land owning units, you need to utilise your resources to the full.”
This was the message relayed by the Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment, Dr. Mahendra Reddy when handing over small farming equipment and irrigation kit offer letters to successful recipients throughout the Western Division.
While addressing farmers at Barotu Village in Ra, Qalela, Balevuto, and Tavarau in Tavua and Nabu in Nadi this week, Minister Reddy implored that resources like land, when left idle and without any economic activity, yielded no returns for resource owners and was a major loss to the economy.
“The basics of agriculture business is for you to grow for the market and sell that surplus to buy or construct houses, better facilities etc. and to grow your own farm, so you need to utilise your land.
“Often we see, throughout Fiji, land owning units aren’t utilising their land to its maximum potential. They are only utilising a portion of their land because that’s what they need for their own food consumption but by not utilising their land fully, they’re doing an injustice to their own Mataqali members,” said Minister Reddy.
He added that though the status quo of Fijian traditional systems was of a communal nature, resource owners must also consider the dreams and aspirations of its individual members to grow and develop their livelihoods.
“Every member in the Mataqali has dreams and aspirations to grow and develop, to have better houses, better facilities, to send their children to the best schools and universities and on this note, you can only do that if you utilise your resources better, efficiently, fully,” he said.
“So the reason why we are not utilising our land resources fully is because they don’t believe in surplus creation but only believe in growing food for their own consumption, consumption of the Mataqali and meeting their customary obligations, village needs but in actual fact, the need is much greater than that.
“Your children also want to have good lives, a good house, and a good future so if you don’t do that, you will be left behind, you need to create surplus, you need to utilise your land fully and target the produce for the market.”
Minister Reddy further reiterated the need for landowning units to lease their land in order to create a revenue stream for themselves as there was large tracts of underutilised and idle land throughout the country that needed to be brought under agriculture.
“So we’re asking you, lease it out, you can go into joint ventures and work with others who would want to utilise the land and share the returns with you, share their profits with you, as long as the land isn’t left idle, that’s all that matters.