Satish Chandra Lal, a 61-year-old retiree from Daku Nadogo, has turned two decades of policing experience into a burgeoning agricultural business, with the Daku Natabe Cooperative recording more than 100 tonnes of rice in a recent season and generating roughly $50,000 in revenue. Lal, who served in the Fiji Police Force from 1996 until his retirement in 2018, now manages a 50-acre operation and uses sharecropping arrangements to expand production and share risk with landowners.
Lal returned to his village after leaving the force to care for his elderly mother and quickly shifted to full-time farming. While cultivating the land has long been part of his life, it is now his primary livelihood. He supplements his own acreage by entering sharecropping agreements that allow him to increase planted area without large upfront land costs, splitting harvests with landholders to boost output and spread labour demands across the season.
As secretary of the Daku Natabe Cooperative, Lal has also helped steer collective efforts to modernise local production. The group accessed machinery through the Ministry of Agriculture’s mechanisation programme, notably harvesters that have reduced manual labour and shortened harvest windows. Those changes were pivotal to the cooperative’s latest results: more than 100 tonnes harvested and approximately $50,000 in gross revenue, from which members have seen returns that, after costs, provide a stable supplementary income.
Seasonal weather remains an ongoing challenge. Lal described heavy rains during planting months and dry spells that can delay crops as part of the production cycle in the area. The cooperative model and sharecropping help manage those variables by pooling resources, labour and equipment access. Mechanisation has not eliminated the uncertainties of farming, but it has increased efficiency and made it easier for smallholders in the cooperative to plan and meet marketable volumes.
Lal credits his policing background with instilling habits—goal-setting, disciplined routines and careful financial management—that he says are essential to running a successful farm. Income from rice and other agricultural activities has allowed him and his wife to make home improvements, meet household needs, and set aside savings for emergencies. With their children living abroad, the couple depends largely on these farm earnings for financial independence.
The Daku Natabe Cooperative’s latest season adds to a growing pattern across Fiji of former service personnel and village farmers embracing modernised, cooperative approaches to agriculture. Recent profiles of other ex-officers and smallholders show similar gains when government support, mechanisation and disciplined farm management combine. Lal says the formula going forward is clear: access to land and machinery must be matched by a long-term vision and rigour in daily practices if rural communities are to convert production into sustainable livelihoods.
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