COUNTRY PAPER: FIJI Mr. Satya Narayan Swami Director, Land and Water Resource Management Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Sugar and Land Resettlement, Suva, Republic of the Fiji Islands. _________________________________ AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION IN FIJI 1. Introduction Fiji is an island nation comprising of over 300 of which 109 islands still remain to be habited. The two main islands (Vanua Levu and Viti Levu) support majority of the total population of 775,000 with sizeable percentage being in the urban centres of Suva (168,000), Lautoka (43,300), Labasa (24,100) and Nadi (30,884). The islands are predominantly volcanic and rise to an elevation of around 1,000m above the mean sea level with rivers and streams supporting the tropical rainforest on the windward side and extensively cultivated sugarcane farms on the leeward side. All major economic activities including tourism are based on these islands. In contrast, outer islands vary considerably geologically and topographically from slighter coralline islands to larger volcanic edifices, which support smaller but significant population. The total land area of the country is 18,272km 2 dispersed in the territorial waters of around 141,800km 2 , the proportion of land to water is only 13%, and even smaller when compared to the larger Exclusive Economic Zone. Fiji enjoys two seasonal climate conditions (hot wet and cool dry) with rainfall averaging 1,500mm to 4,000mm annually. The topographic effect means that much of the rainfall is within the windward side of the islands. Up to 80% of the rainfall is recorded in the wet season and 20% in the dry season. Agriculture has been the backbone for Fiji’s economy over the past decade. However, its contribution to the national GDP has declined from 20% to around 16% recently. This has been mainly due to shift of labour force from farming to other sectors such as tourism, manufacturing and the garment industries. 1