The Ministry of Agriculture is working closely with affected farmers following the devastating effects of Tropical Cyclone Winston.

In a briefing this morning, Minister for National Disaster Management office Inia Seruiratu says the Agriculture ministry is already doing its assessment.

“Agriculture Ministry is already doing its assessments usually the first assistance that’s provided by agriculture Ministry is on the provision of planting materials basically seeds and cuttings and suckers if they are available that is always the first line of assistance so that we can recover quickly in terms of our food security and then build up on the livelihoods of the people”

Acting Permanent Secretary Uraia Waibuta said TC Winston completely destroyed all root crops and vegetable supplies and the Ministry is now engaged in a preliminary survey to assess damages sustained.

Waibuta says they have set up five teams of four people within the Ministry and a team has been deployed to Koro, Ovalau, Moturiki, Nairai, Gau and Batiki to focus on the Eastern Division, this is apart from the team that is in the four divisions and the other affected regions.

For the dairy industry, there were 313 affected livestock farmers in the Central Division and a total of 443 farmers in the Western Division.

Waibuta says the power outage and blocked road access resulted in the immediate loss of 15,000 litres of milk for dairy farmers.