AgriBusiness Support Project (ASP) for Samoa

By Lagi Keresoma

APIA: THURSDAY 19 JUNE 2014: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Samoam government today signed the AgriBusiness Support Project (ASP) to provide business support services and financing to the agricultural businesses in Samoa.

The grant of $5 million from ADB and the $0.17 million from the Samoan government will help boost the “economic performance by addressing constraints that hinder increased trade and export.”

The project aims at sustaining commercial agribusinesses.

“The project is also working with the ANZ bank to provide suitable financing services to partner agribusiness,” said the visiting ADB Vice President Ms. Lakshmi Venkatachalam who signed the project with Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi.

“Agribusiness provides jobs and income. So their development will play a critical role in promoting a sustainable and inclusive growth for the community,” said Venkatachalam.

Agribusiness are small scale family business with less than 400 employees.

Their focus is on agro-industrial production such as chilli sauce, banana chips or fresh products for export or banana chips, or fresh products for export such as taro or Tahitian limes. They engage a significant number of smallholder families as suppliers of raw material. Agribusinesses are, therefore, critical for stimulating agricultural production.

The Samoa AgriBusiness Support Project aims to boost Samoa’s economic performance by addressing constraints that hinder increased trade and export. The project will assist selected commercial agribusinesses grow sustainably and will work with participating commercial banks to provide suitable financing services to partner agribusinesses.

Establishing contractual raw materials supply with farmers and improving product quality are all under the projects provisions.

The grant will be executed within an eight years time frame.

Free Internet Access for Earth

One of the most challengers Farmers have is connectivity as their locality are remote and communication is a barrier and an obstacle to their daily activities.

Farmers try to keep up with technological advancements and communicate effectively with access to timely

information which has a co-relating  impact on productivity. The much needed information like weather, seeds, market prices and potential markets are some issues apart from the many which Farmers need to have access to at any point in time.

Mostly Farmers are remotely located and most communication providers do not have the infrastructure to allow for such services to reach farming communities. One of the main reasons why network providers shy away from this localities is because of the immense cost involved in set up and maintaining such services.

But there is a new project which has been developed by Media Development Investment Fund  to provide free access to internet data through wifi, made available effectively to all parts of the world. It is called the "OUTERNET" which could be the solution farmers are waiting for.

This project is said to be made available in 2015.

More information on the project can be viewed through wikipedia

Floods Devastate Fiji Farmers

Climate change is taking it toll on small island nations in the Pacific and the changing weather patterns is causing alot of problems to our nation and particularly the farmers of Fiji.

Dalo Plantation under water (source mininfo)

Last week Fiji faced a tropical depression and we farmers have lost alot through the effects of heavy rain leading to flooding.

In the next few days Agronet will be publish an article on the effects of the flood on the dalo root.

Not only we dalo farmers are affected but also poultry farmers as well.

Please do leave your comments or views on climate change effects on farmers below in the comment box.

Thanks
Andrew Weleilakeba

Coloi Youths Move Inland

Coloi youths are a group of farmers in Sawakasa, Tailevu North and their main crop is Kava. These youths face challenges daily and a significant one is the distance to travel to their farm lands. The distance from the village to their farm is around  70km and it is unrealistic to travel there daily.

the farm shelter which needs to be worked on to provide the comfort

 Team Leader Te Navila has organised their plans for the year and setting targets to have better houses to ensure the youths live in comfort after a hard days work. He made a review on their farms and found that these youths are lured back into the village to attend to village obligations and thus loose focus on their farms. The immediate needs identified were  access to farm to be cleared and maintained, accommodation to be improved, and each youth to have own shelter by the end of the year.

youths meeting to better their farming activities for 2014

In the kava plantation weed controlling 

Youths Trained on Dalo Harvesting

Dalo planting and harvesting is part of subsistence farming in Fiji and any youth brought up in a farm would obviously know the trick of the trade. But for commercial farmers it is important that it is done the right way. Samu believes that if youths are to be lured into farming they need to be introduced into farming at a very early age with hands on experience. Here we see that harvesting stirs alot of interest among these youths as the crop are ready for the market and all are calculating the value one bundle can fetch!

Samu teaching youths of the clan

A group of youths who are mostly cousins from a clan in the village of Navuso took time off from their daily routine to learn from Samu (experienced farmer) on how to harvest Dalo for the local market. Samu has been in the trade as a farmer for over 25years.

The youths are lucky to have an experienced teacher to teach them on this skill. It may seem just like another dalo harvest but the fact is that would be youths are introduced to farming experiences at the perfect age.