The Rural Affairs and Environment Ministry has embarked on a Lm130,000 spending spree to promote the quality of Maltese fruit, vegetables and wines in a double-pronged effort to make Maltese people buy local produce.

The penny seems to have dropped in some quarters in that to make people buy local products they need to be marketed well and be made pleasing to the eye. This is happening, but is it happening enough?

There have been some very good initiatives, both in Malta and abroad, to promote our ‘home-made’ products – such as the Mediterranean Food Festival at the Eden Arena.

The festival showcased Maltese talents in gastronomy to both the local populace as well as to any tourists who attended. There was a wealth of tasty delights on offer at the festival – yet are those who were represented at the stalls being given enough opportunity to make their produce available to the market? There was, for example, a stall that had sun-dried tomato and olive paste spread on bread with home-pressed olive oil. Thousands of Maltese families would clamour for such products if they were more available and better marketed.

The ministry is to spend a total of Lm90,000 on promoting the consumption of locally grown vegetables as well as processed products such as kunserva – all well and good. These are good quality products that deserve a helping hand. This promotion comes in many forms, such as billboard advertising and television campaigns.

However, one of the more effective forms of promotion was the launching of a new booklet that features Maltese vegetables as part of the Naturalment Malti campaign. It is indeed a very informative booklet, which also touches on a recommended balanced diet – offering informative guidelines on what one should eat.

One must also note that government is also aiding fruit and vegetable farmers in upgrading their facilities through European Union funds. This funding has given this sector, which has long been using very antiquated methods, a new impetus to improve the products. Yet, it is also important to find a happy balance between ending up with mass produced fruit and vegetables or the good quality products we are used to today.

Malta has a unique agricultural sector, mainly due to our topographic constraints and it is not often that one sees tiny little terraced fields. Yet – with the right amount of work and expertise – these fields produce such bountiful results.

To complement the shift, the first organic farming certificate was recently awarded to a family of farmers in Mselliet. This family has a buffer zone around its farming area and produces crops 100 per cent naturally without the use of pesticides or artificial fertilisers.

The produce is labelled 100 per cent organic and according to parliamentary secretary Frans Agius, surveys have shown that consumers are willing to pay more for organic produce.

This is probably true. Although there are more organic farms in the pipeline, more must be done to encourage farmers to adopt these methods. It is useless for farmers to persist in offering a different product to that which the market is demanding.

Once these organic products start to hit the shelves, the probability is that they will start selling like hot cakes and the consumer will be frustrated that there will only be a limited amount available.

One farm cannot supplement the whole local market, that is for sure. And if indications of the surveys mentioned by Dr Agius are correct, then demand for organic products will rocket skywards. One understands that such farms need time to convert to organic methods, but perhaps more can be done to tap funding specific to that sector to try and speed up the conversion process.