ROC Ambassador Daniel DW Tang and R&D Minister Alfred Alfred, Jr. jointly hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Taiwan Technical Mission’s new pig house last week.
Speaker Kenneth Kedi, Minister Amenta Matthew, Senators David Kramer, Dennis Momotaro, Daisy Alik Momotaro, and Sherwood Tibon, US Ambassador Karen Stewart, R&D Secretary Rebecca Lorennij, Majuro Mayor Ladie Jack, Lae Mayor Anderson Kattil, CMI Land Grant Associate Director Biuma Samson and representatives from related government authorities were invited to witness the completion of the new pig house.
At the ceremony, Alfred expressed his appreciation to ROC (Taiwan) and the embassy for assistance in many areas to the RMI over the years.
Ambassador Tang expressed gratitude to Alfred, Ministers Brenson Wase and Tony Muller, Mayor Jack and their staff for the efforts in completing the new pig house. Tang reiterated the strong commitments of the ROC in strengthening diplomatic relations.
The Taiwan Technical Mission (TTM) was established in 1998 in Laura to implement agricultural cooperation. R&D and TTM are implementing new projects from 2015 to 2020 to address RMI food security and sustainable development by providing one pair of piglets, four kinds of staple foods, crop seedlings and four kinds of fruit tree seedlings to every household on outer islands.
The new project aims to enable outer islands households to grow their own supply of local crops sufficient to meet household dietary needs and reduce reliance on costly imported foods. To achieve the goal, the TTM will breed 6,000 piglets by 2020. This plan led to doubling the capacity of TTM’s pig house so it can handle breeding 1,200 pigs a year.
The new pig house has 46 breeding houses, 16 furrowing houses, eight nursery houses and an artificial insemination laboratory.
Read more about this in the December 23, 2016 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.