Irregular production is seen as the main problem in farming in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
According to Saipan and Northern Islands Fair Association president Michael Ogo, this is the reason why importation is still high and local produce are not being preferred.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we\u2019re importing is consistency. Basically we\u2019re talking with the farmers that, you know, you got to be producing, and you have to be producing on a regular basis,\u201d Ogo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy does the F&B manager at the hotel or the purchasing manager at the restaurant going to buy imported [produce]? Because you give them produce this week but you don\u2019t have it next week or so. Consistency is the biggest issue,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Ogo said they are working with the island farmers to address the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working with the farmers, NMC-CREES (Northern Marianas College-Cooperative Research Extension and Education Service), and DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) are working with the farmers to close those gaps. We already know what the problem is. It\u2019s only a matter of working on the problem,\u201d Ogo said.<\/p>\n
He added that they have been having summits and meetings with the farmers to talk about their production.<\/p>\n
He also mentioned that not only will supporting farmers good for the farmers themselves but for the whole community as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy lowering the importation basically the money will circulate in the island and not go abroad,\u201d Ogo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying that we\u2019re going to stop importing, we\u2019re going to continue importing but we\u2019re going to lower the importation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Ogo said 95 percent of the food on the island is being imported.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you know we got a lot of development coming so we definitely need to bring up the amount of produce and livestock production,\u201d he added. (Frauleine S. Villanueva)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Irregular production is seen as the main problem in farming in the CNMI. According to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,42,1349],"class_list":["post-208731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-food","tag-michael-ogo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}