By Edwin Fidelis – EM TV, Kokopo
The Women in Agriculture group of East New Britain have pushed for recognition in the province to participate actively in the agriculture sector.,
In a recent move, the women’s group in partnering with NARI, launched a book to assist other women farmers to understand agriculture business.
This comes after concerns were raised over farmers lacking the know-how on generating revenue, using their garden produce.
More than half of PNG’s seven million men and women are subsistence farmers who grow food, both to eat and sell. But there are concerns that many farmers still lack basic knowledge on how to generate a steady flow of income from they produce.
In a series of attempts to address these concerns, the leading agriculture institution, NARI, has produced educational materials to help farmers understand this concept.
And recently, NARI in partnership with the East New Britain Women in Agriculture, launched another book to help those in the agriculture sector. The book is aimed at assisting women farmers to understand the core of business making, that centres around farming and marketing strategies.
Agriculture institutions, such as NARI, have been at the forefront of implementing scientific research and innovations; concentrating on unlocking the vast potential of the agriculture sector that serves 80 per cent of PNG’s population.
The national government have since continued to pump money into the renewable sector, to improve agriculture standards.
About K150 million from this year’s national budget was allocated to the agriculture sector and SME development.
But this doesn’t include financial support grant coming from overseas donors.
Papua New Guinea’s agriculture sector contributes about 32 per cent of GDP to the country’s economy.
And are large portion of this GDP is from ordinary Papua New Guinean subsistence farmers.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MibHDXFkrQM%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26wmode%3Dopaque%26showinfo%3D0%26showsearch%3D0%26rel%3D0
