(PR) – The Fiji vocational training system continues to prepare young people for urban employment, often overlooking the real opportunities within rural forestry and agriculture communities, according to Samuela Lagataki, president of the Fiji Forestry Professionals Association (FFPA).
Lagataki said this gap weakens rural economies and ignores the potential for community-driven forestry, agroforestry, and land-based enterprises.
Following the recent Pacific Islands GIS and Remote Sensing User Conference at the University of the South Pacific, Lagataki said that the time has come to reframe rural learning around the realities of where people live. He emphasised that communities can unlock long-term value from their land only when training is relevant to local conditions, local crops, and local production systems.
He noted that FFPA members bring a wide range of forestry, agriculture, planning, and GIS-related expertise that can support more contextualised and practical learning programmes. By integrating mapping tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth, and QGIS, and combining them with emerging AI assistants accessible through smartphones, farmers and landowners can make better decisions, plan farms more effectively, and monitor their land with greater accuracy.
Lagataki said these opportunities complement the work already being done by the government, vocational schools, NGOs, and the private sector. FFPA’s contribution is to help tailor capacity building to specific communities such as Naitasiri farmers, cane farmers in the Western Division, and pine and mahogany landowners who rely on clear land-use information, farm planning skills, and value-chain literacy.
He said the GIS and Remote Sensing User Conference provided an ideal platform for collaboration, creating pathways for rural communities to access the benefits of GIS, AI, and professional expertise, so they can build stronger, more resilient livelihoods grounded in the resources they already have.
