Fiji needs to widen its agricultural export base

Fiji needs to diversity its agricultural export base rather than relying on traditional exports such as sugar. The comment was made by a senior agricultural officer.

The officer said more attention needed to be given to other products such as duruka and taro given that the demand for these products were very high overseas as a result of the high proportion of Fijian and Pacific Islands populations in countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The officer said that most produce could be exported, however, the only thing that local producers needed to work on was the quality of exports to ensure its marketability.

The comments were made at a good quality standards workshop held in Suva Monday, 5 February 2007.