PIRAS Virtual Exhibition & Talanoa | Filipe

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Filipe Baituwawa is a 30-year-old youth farmer from the village of Wema in the province of Navosa.

Before the lockdown, he was planting kava and banana in his mother village in Sawene. During the COVID-19 lockdown, life in the Navosa highlands was difficult, the price of food items went up and members of the community had no other choice but to cultivate more crops for home consumption.

Through PIRAS, farmers like Filipe in the rural highlands of Navosa were assisted with vegetable seeds, manure, community nurseries sand fencing that will assist him to supply fresh vegetables with high nutrition value for both home consumption and market.

Representing the community facilitator from his village, Filipe attended training facilitated by Partners in Community Development Fiji (PCDF) that covered topics on post-harvest handling and farm management. The absence of appropriate infrastructure, labor resources, poor harvesting practices, and handling is an issue for farmers in the Sigatoka highlands. PIRAS aims to promote safe food handling, preservation, and distribution to eliminate losses and accelerate recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

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