BY DOUGLAS VAHIA
The Commodity Export Marketing Authority’s (CEMA) is helping one man with steps closer to becoming a teacher one day.
For Landry Tunganimae, a young man from Ugi Island in the Makira Ulawa Province, copra has been his life; helping him pay for his school fees from his primary school days to secondary education level and now tertiary education level.
He praises the Commodity Export Marketing Authority’s (CEMA) ‘Farmers First’ initiative which is pulling his dream of becoming a teacher closer.
Tunganimae helps his father at the coconut plantation and produces copra on an average of six bags a week.
He and his father then take the bags to a CEMA agent who lives a few kilometres away.
Tunganimae acknowledges CEMA for establishing agents.
He said agents are closer to the farmers, thus, are the conduit that contribute to the livelihood of every farmers.
“I thank CEMA for setting up agents for they injected the much-needed cash into the rural economy,” he said.
Landry also lauds CEMA for continuing to support farmers with price stability.
He encourages copra and cocoa farmers around the country to trust CEMA and sell their produce to the authority.
Jerry Wala is a CEMA Agent at Ugi Island who buys copra from Tunganimae and his father.
In 2019, he became a buying agent and then in 2024, he became a CEMA agent after fulfilling the agent requirements established by CEMA.
Wala calls on CEMA to consider availing one of the two short haul fast crafts recently given to the authority by the national government, for Makira Ulawa Province.
“We need the fast craft to service between our islands- getting copra and cocoa from farmers to agents and to buying centres,” he said.
Photo: Supplied
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