Food Security is important in any country- to grow and produce its own food.
Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries including women in agriculture are some issues being discussed this week by senior officials from the 22 APEC countries, during the third Senior Officials Meeting.
In PNG, rice is one of those introduced staple food that many have come to love.
Annually PNG imports 400,000 tones of rice, spending up to K600 million.
And Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Benny Allan says the country cannot continue to import rice with government’s aim of supplying locally own rice by 2025.
“By 2025, we want to grow our own rice, we want to grow our own rice, stop the import and supply local demand. Trukai has started growing its own rice in Markham,” says Allan.
10 Hectares of land is being cleared at 14 mile, outside Port Moresby for this through a project between the government and the Phillippines.
“We can do it, we have land to do that with locals,” he adds.
With local production comes the challenge of product pricing according to production cost and Minister Allan says he wants to see the price of rice produced locally cut in half.
“Rice (1kg) costs K6.00, want to cut cost of locallt grown rice by 50 percent, we want to make it affordable” he further added.