The Fiji Crop and Livestock Council (FCLC) is expected to conduct awareness training for its farmer members on understanding prices in relation to the value chain.

The discussion on prices and indexes, which are used worldwide, was discussed during the Council meeting the past month under the mobile apps agenda item.

Registered crop and livestock farmers are now able to receive price information or information on the movement in price (indexes) of their commodity under the mobile texting service.

Council chairman Simon Cole said it was clear from the council discussions that farmers need to understand the full cost of the value chain.

“It is clear that as each person takes a dollar as the commodity moves through the chain subsequently the value of the commodity increases,” he said.

“Secondly we need to be very clear that if we’re going to give a price exactly what that price is and where it fits in the value chain.”

Price, Mr Cole said, means different things to different people at different locations.

“What is a price? If you put a price on a commodity, should it be the farm gate price, market, exporter, or retail price,” he said.

“Then have you have geographical differences – the price in Savusavu is different than in Lautoka for different commodities and vice versa.”

Relevant information

A Council member present at the meeting noted it was important that farmers received information that was relevant to them.

Mr Cole said: “I would prefer to look at the change in price. We started an index in August this year, so if you keep adding to the index you can see the trend in price over time. An interesting case in point is cassava.”

“The cassava index is down at 43 per cent, there’s obviously been a sharp drop in the price of cassava and yet the last reported change was up five per cent.

“So a farmer can say that the price of cassava is down in the long term but it’s coming up although it’s not where it used to be in August.

“If the farmer sees the price is going up he will hold out for a slightly better price at the farm gate.”

Source: FIJI CROP AND LIVESTOCK COUNCIL

Edited by: RACHNA LAL