FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
The content is not available.

FAO project to support Tonga’s horticulture competitiveness begins

28/02/2019 Nuku'alofa

FAO’s support to build Tonga’s horticulture competitiveness began in earnest with the official opening of its inception workshop in Nuku’alofa in February.

FAO in collaboration with the Ministry for Agriculture and Food & Forests aims to increase the efficiency of crops production, improve the price competitiveness of these foods relative to food imports, and contribute to their increased availability.

“The development of the horticulture industry especially fruits and vegetables are among the core Ministry’s mandates. While it directly serves our objectives of assuring food and nutrition security for all Tongans. It makes a significant contribution to raising economic growth, employment and exports to supporting higher quality of life for all.“ Said the Minister for Agriculture Hon. Losaline Ma’asi at the opening.

The project called Support to Tonga Horticulture Competitiveness will provide also technical assistance to the food processors and SMEs to adopt improved food processing and value addition practices.  

FAO’s International Agribusiness Value Chains Consultant, Shukrullah Sherzad said. “This project will improve business environment for farmers, processors and buyers through building technical capacity on agribusiness management and by improving the marketing linkages between farmers and buyers.”

This project will work in close collaboration with key stakeholders and governmental institutions including Food, Quarantine and Business Management. It will build their capacity to provide technical support to farmers and food processors beyond the end of this project.

The objective of this workshop is to agree on implementation, coordination arrangements and develop a detailed work plan the project and agree on implementation arrangements for the assessment study on postharvest loses along Tonga’s fruit and vegetable chains.