National Agricultural Policy 2017-2021.

This National Agriculture Plan (NAP) for the period 2017-2021 highlights 7 National Goals or Priority Areas: 1) Food Security & Nutrition; 2) Enabling Environment; 3) Market Efficiency and Trade Access; 4) Science, Research & Technology; 5)Human Resource Development; 6) Biosecurity; and 7) Climate Change and Disaster Risk Resilience.
The NAP addresses the need to increase the total food production in the Cook Islands in order to move the country from a predominantly consuming nation to a producing and even exporting nation and to attain food and nutrition security. Agriculture was once the foundation of the Cook Islands economy. Since the 1980’s the sector has been in decline. The SWOT analysis shows contributing factors to this situation include outmigration, reduction in available arable land, an ageing farmer population, farm work force constraints and climate related extreme weather events including longer drought periods and unusual seasonal trends, etc. The following policy goals are recognised as the key areas to be addressed: Policy goal 1: Strengthen household and national food security and nutrition; Policy goal 5: A united agricultural sector aimed to grow the industry and develop human resource potential. To promote household and national food security for the country, the specific policy objectives under Policy goal 1 are: 1.1 Increase overall food crops and livestock at all levels of production for household consumption, socio and cultural needs and livelihood income; 1.2 Promote the consumption and preservation of nutritional foods and the increase in growing of highly nutritional crops; 1.3 Strengthen linkages between farmers and the hotel and restaurants to create culinary culture that utilizes crops grown locally in the country; 1.4: Develop crop and livestock diversity towards a sustainable supply that covers a wide range of nutritional food needs.
The document promotes increased agricultural production in an environmentally sustainable manner. The following policy goals are linked with this: Policy goal 4-to improve food production and products through science, research, technology and the sustainable practices; Policy goal 6 - to improve biosecurity to cope with border protection challenges. In order to protect agriculture and maintain biosecurity, the document suggests the priority areas, including: biosecurity legislation strengthened and regulations developed for the Pa Enua boarder control management and surveillance monitoring; Strengthen Biosecurity Area and update approved international treatments (Import & Export) in compliance to International trade requirements or rules.
Regarding to enabling more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the following policy goals are considered as the key areas: Policy goal 2- Promote an effective and efficient enabling business environment supportive of agriculture sector development; Policy goal 3- Increasing incomes from improves labour substituted technologies, food processed quality, food safety and market efficiency and trade.
The National Agriculture Policy also highlights the importance to promote climate change and disaster risk resilience (Goal 7). To assist producers to adapt and strengthen their resilience against climate change and disaster risk, 5 policy objectives are set up: 1) Establish national and community based disaster management plans specific to the agricultural sector; 2) Establish and maintain effective early-warning and mitigation systems and improve access to seasonal forecasts for farmers; 3) Strengthen the management of risks associated with food standards, pest and disease outbreaks, invasive species and natural disasters; 4) Explore resilient food crops that are tolerant to the impacts of climate change and promote traditional and organic growing techniques for taro and other traditional crops such as Puraka, Yams, Ti, Kape, etc. for times of emergency; 5) Promote resilient food crops and tolerant to the impacts of climate change and encourage traditional and organic growing techniques and traditional food crops for time of emergencies.