Farmers on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Credit: Kastom Gaden Association (KGA)

By Catherine Wilson
HONIARA, Solomon Islands, May 7 2013 (IPS)

Life is difficult enough for communities on the remote southern Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.  Sustaining a livelihood from the land is a daily struggle on the steep coastal mountain slopes that plunge to the sea, made worse by the absence of adequate roads, transport and government services. And now, climate change is taking its toll on the already precarious food situation here.

“From mid-March to June it is always raining and whatever crops we grow will not go to harvest,” Alice, a member of a farming family on the Weather Coast, told IPS, referring to the period locals here call “time hungry”.

During these months, most meals consist of rice and one or two other items procured from the shops in the city of Honiara, the capital of this nation comprising more than 900 islands located northeast of Australia and east of Papua New Guinea.

Stretching for 160 kilometres, this island, the largest in the Solomon Islands archipelago, has a widely dispersed population. Located on the northern coast and home to 64,600 people, Honiara is separated by high mountains from isolated villages on the southern coast, where the total population is more than 19,000.

The climate here is hot and humid all year round and people are vulnerable to cyclones, gale force winds and flooding during the wet season, as well as earthquakes and landslides due to the country’s proximity to the highly seismic Pacific Rim of Fire.

Scientists are now predicting the weather extremes that batter this rugged coast will only get worse as the nation faces the full force of climate change.

The sea level near the Solomon Islands has been rising by eight millimetres per year compared to the global average of 2.8 to 3.6 mm, according to the Pacific Climate Change Science Programme.  During the first half of this century, average annual and extreme rainfall is predicted to increase, along with the intensity of cyclones.

Climate change is the greatest challenge to sustainable development in this South Pacific nation, imperilling the food security of 85 percent of the population who depend on subsistence agriculture. In terms of development, the Solomon Islands is ranked 142 out of 187 countries by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has the second lowest average per capita income in the Pacific region, while 23 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Residents of Weather Coast villages like Duidui, Reavu and Avuavu use the steep slopes above the coastline to cultivate crops, growing everything from taro, yams and sweet potatoes to cassava and bananas. This region receives heavy rainfall of 5,000 to 8,000 mm a year during two wet seasons, the first from January to April, the second from May to September.

Boku Joke, a climate change advisor working with the non-profit Kastom Gaden Association (KGA), told IPS that resulting floods and intense saturation of the soil has made life difficult for farmers and threatened food production.

Heavy rain also erodes soil nutrients and provides fertile ground for plant pests and diseases like chuaka, which affects taro, to thrive.

“Rain and floods and lack of crop bulking (mass cultivation and storage of different crop varieties) by local farmers have also resulted in a loss of crop diversity,” Joke said, explaining that since farmers plant just one crop, they are often left with nothing if extreme weather ruins the harvest.

Varieties of taro and yam were also lost when food gardens were abandoned and pests and diseases proliferated during the “Tensions” (1998 to 2003), a civil conflict in the Solomon Islands that left hundreds dead and 35,000 displaced when grievances among the indigenous Gwales of the main island, Guadalcanal, led them to fight the influx of numbers of migrants from Malaita, a heavily populated island to the east.

The presence of armed members of the Guadalcanal Liberation Front (GLF) on the Weather Coast forced villagers to flee into the bush for up to two years.

The government now recognises the need to focus investment on developing and supporting agricultural livelihoods to ensure a secure future for people in the region.

“Food and agricultural production has been and will continue to be the most important source of economic development and income generation as well as food security for these communities, given their geographical remoteness,” Hezekiah Valimana, chief field officer at the ministry of agriculture’s Guadalcanal office, told IPS.  Agriculture accounts for 38 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of the labour force.

Agriculture will also be critical to enduring peace and stability in this part of the country as a history of poor access to development, basic services and income opportunities in rural and remote areas contributed to the grievances that triggered the conflict more than a decade ago.

“An increase in food and cash crop production will help to improve the livelihoods of families and provide cash incomes,” Valimana said.  Most residents here are subsistence farmers and the average cash income of households in the region can be as little as 13 dollars per month.

Valimana advocates bringing different communities together to “achieve shared goals,” stressing that collaboration on agricultural projects is “key to maintaining peace.”

In recognition of the environmental challenges ahead, the government launched its first National Climate Change Policy last year to improve the coordination of adaptation efforts by various government ministries and national institutions.

The KGA, which works alongside the ministry of agriculture, as well as the ministry of health and the ministry of environment and conservation, has made rural communities a priority, and is working to deliver new technologies to improve farm management and productivity, as well as planting materials to 25 percent of rural households in the Solomon Islands.

On the Weather Coast, KGA is collaborating with local farmer support groups to increase crop diversity, introduce climate resistant crops and promote contour farming, which involves tilling land along lines of consistent elevation on hill slopes to reduce the speed of rainwater run-off and prevent soil erosion.

“We need new or more climate resistant crops,” Alice confirmed.  “But we also need more education and training about how to cultivate bush foods such as breadfruit and nuts and preserve them for eating and selling.  At the moment, most people don’t see these as useful or commercial foods.”

Patrick Arathe, leader of an urban youth agricultural initiative in the Solomon Islands, stands beside the small farm’s new piggery. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
MUNDA, Solomon Islands, Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

With little more than a bush knife and an axe between them, a group of young boys between the ages of nine and 18 years have taken food security into their own hands. In Kindu, a community of 5,000 people in the coastal urban area of Munda in the Solomon Islands, these boys, who have been abandoned by their parents, have transformed their lives by establishing a cooperatively run farm.

They now have the largest urban agricultural enterprise in the Munda area on New Georgia Island, Western Province, which is providing them a sustainable livelihood and boosting wider food and nutritional security.

Youth unemployment stands at 45 percent in the Solomon Islands, a developing South Pacific island state east of Papua New Guinea. Securing an occupation and nutrition here is not easy, but with a vision and wisdom beyond his years, 23-year-old Patrick Arathe has managed to do just that.

Arathe’s parents abandoned him when he was just nine years old, and he was sent to live with extended family members, as is the custom here. After completing secondary school, he became deeply concerned about the many children in the area in a similar situation.

With no one to fully support their needs, they suffered from poor nutrition and a lack of clothing, emotional support and guidance. Few could afford to attend school.

“I saw the kids and I knew they were the same as me, fatherless,” Arathe told IPS. Strongly convinced that “kids are the future”, he was keen to find a way to support them, so in July 2012, he gathered a group of 16 youths and embarked on a small farming project.

Under the laws of customary land-ownership, Arathe managed to obtain a plot of land owned by his grandfather, where his youth group now grows cabbage, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins, potatoes, cassava, corn, watermelons, pawpaws and bananas.

“I thought that farming was the best idea because there are not enough vegetables at the market and there is a big need to grow more,” he explained.

Though some of the youths were initially sceptical about the project, their doubts have quickly been replaced by a genuine enthusiasm for agriculture, with some members aiming to become full-time farmers once they finish school.

As the group’s leader, Patrick ensures the boys have time to do their homework after school.  Then in the late afternoon, when the heat of the sun dissipates, they spread out over the farm to plant, weed, water and harvest some of the crops for the next day’s market.

But the going is not always smooth. “The soil is not very good here,” Arathe pointed out, adding that environmental and climate challenges often plague their cultivation efforts.

The Kastom Garden Association (KGA), a national NGO, is doing its part to help this youth initiative thrive. The NGO believes that rising sea levels caused by climate change coupled with years of “slash and burn” land clearing practices have degraded the soil and compromised food security in Munda.

The KGA, which prioritises smallholder farmers and focuses on enabling village communities to develop their own practical ways of achieving household food security, has helped Arathe and his group implement a composting system and create an organic pest spray, made from locally grown chillies.

According to Arathe, “The cabbages are now growing faster and bigger.”

“We have given the group advice on vegetable nurseries, organic farming methods like composting and mulching, methods to improve their soil and different planting materials to improve crop diversity,” KGA’s Project Officer Mary Timothy told IPS, adding that the NGO mentors youths involved in farming initiatives in other provinces as well.

Despite challenges along the way, there is no doubting the success of this unique agricultural initiative.

In addition to selling their fresh produce directly to the community, the youth take bulk orders twice a week from the local hospital and from four major businesses on the island.  In a week, they can produce and sell between 500 to 1,000 “lots” – a local measurement arrived at by eyeballing the produce — of fruit and vegetables, earning an approximate income of between 600 and 1,300 dollars.

Local households also support the initiative, with some purchasing produce directly from the farm.

By December 2012, the boys had earned enough money to pay for their needs and enrol as full-time students. Their levels of nutrition have also improved in leaps and bounds.

“We eat vegetables for a balanced diet, sometimes for lunch or in the evening,” said Arathe. “The children are starting to grow healthy.”

Leslie Kiadapite, principal field officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Munda, told IPS, “It is very important to engage young people to become involved in agriculture. Even with an education, not everyone here will be employed in the formal sector. So we encourage young people to cultivate the land.

“This is important for food security, income generation and sustainable livelihoods,” she added.

Eighty percent of this nation’s population of 552,000 reap a livelihood from subsistence agriculture, cash crops and fishing. Yet food production still falls short of meeting the demands of a population growing at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, while the legacy of a five-year civil conflict (1999-2003), which erupted following disputes between communities about access to land and resources on the main island of Guadalcanal, heavily impacted infrastructure and services throughout the country.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 14 percent of children below five years of age, or approximately 5,000 in the Solomon Islands are underweight, and 33 percent suffer from stunting due to malnutrition.

Arathe’s project seems to point the way towards achieving national goals. Beyond attaining nutritional self-sufficiency, farm labour is teaching boys skills pertaining to livelihood generation, food security and better eating habits, which will benefit them throughout their lifetime.

“They now have experience,” Arathe told IPS. “They know how to plant and harvest…They can work at the nursery and do transplanting (of crops). They are much happier, too,” he added.

(END)

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

A huge moment for reform of the industrial farming system in Europe has many stakeholders on edge. Farmers who are feeling the crunch of rising input costs – from fertilisers to fuel – believe they can benefit greatly from a transition to more traditional and sustainable farming methods.

An organic farm in the village of Swierze Panki, about 100 kilometres east of the Polish capital Warsaw. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

But opponents of the European Commission-sponsored reform package – which aims to places tough conditionalities upon subsidies to local farmers in an effort to overhaul an ineffective system of food production – say it could stifle productivity.

In times of global crisis, ensuring food supplies is as daunting a task as ever. But advocates of reform say that the answer does not lie in industrial food production.

“We are already producing a lot in Europe,” Trees Robijns, EU agriculture policy officer at BirdLife, one of the NGOs pushing for reform at the local level in Brussels, told IPS.

“But we have to ask ourselves at what cost and for how long we can go on this way. If we do not set our farming on a sound agro-environmental basis, we will lose out in the long-term. We are destroying our water, soils, our biodiversity, and this will lead to decreased productivity.”

Several studies have shown that sustainable smaller-scale farming has more productive capacity than industrial farming.

The latest International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, authored by a large international group of scientists and endorsed by governments around the world, shows that sustainable family farming is the best way to address the food and environmental challenges facing the world.

La Via Campesina, a global farmers’ network comprised of over 20 million peasants, also published a report concluding that smaller-scale agriculture can feed the world.

According to the European Network for Rural Development, a body working under the remit of the European Commission, current EU policies could be having a detrimental effect on subsistence agriculture by regarding small farms as “an unwanted feature that hinders the competitiveness of a nation’s agriculture.”

In Eastern European states like Romania, up to two thirds of farms in the country can be subsistence or semi-subsistence. And they are slowly disappearing.

“Most of the people have given up farming in our village, they now go to the city to work and use their salaries to buy food from supermarkets,” Marcel Has, a Romanian farmer who works on a two-hectare farm – most of it on rented land – in Firiteaz village in Western Romania, told IPS.

“I was also about to give up two years ago, but then I read in a farmers’ magazine about the possibility of connecting directly with consumers who are interested in the kind of clean, local food I can provide. Now I can support my family, fix my house. I think there is a future in ecological farming – food in the supermarkets is of poor quality and people want to eat better,” he said.

The CAP reform proposed by the Commission is a step in the direction of strengthening smaller farms, by recognising their role in protecting the environment and biodiversity, and compensating them for it.

The Commission is also a proponent of more organic farming– which now accounts for roughly five percent of farming in the EU – and of encouraging young farmers to stay on their land.

Certainly, food security is more of an issue outside of Europe. But there, too, it could hardly be argued that European-style industrial farming is the solution.

Export subsidies for European agri-products, an answer to overproduction by local farmers, resulted in the ’dumping’ of items like grain, sugar and animal products on  international markets at prices so low that local farmers in developing countries were thrown out of business in huge droves.

Numerous studies document the negative impacts of dumping by the EU in developing countries, among them an a recent analysis of effects of EU milk exports on Jamaican farmers and an assessment of impacts of EU sugar trade in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Responding to strong international criticism, the EU has been addressing this issue.

”The days when export refunds were needed to clear surpluses are a thing of the past – in 2011 export refunds were only at 0.5 percent of CAP expenditure, as compared to 11 percent in 1999,” wrote the European Commission in a statement sent to IPS.

”In fact, export refunds are only used very occasionally, in times of crisis, when world prices are already very low – so their impact is limited.”

But the global farmers’ organisation, La Via Campesina (LVC), is of a different opinion: according to the network of 20 million peasants, the EU, like the United States and other rich countries, are excluding several agricultural sectors (such as poultry and pork in the case of the EU) from subsidies reductions negotiated within the World Trade Organisation.

LVC also claims that between 1992 and 2008, the EU has included more and more subsidies into the so-called “green box” category of permitted financial aid to domestic farmers.

The EU is today the biggest exporter of agri-products in the world, with 100 billion euros worth of products exported in 2011.

Europe is also the leading importer of agricultural goods, largely animal foodstuffs whose production comes with very high environmental and social costs in exporting countries, according to the Transnational Institute.

Gerard Choplin, policy officer at European Coordination La Via Campesina, told IPS that the way forward to ensuring food security is the relocalisation of agriculture and strengthening of local farmers everywhere.

He said this could be encouraged through the following measures: banning exports at prices below production costs in the exporting country; allowing tarrifs on imported products at below production costs in the importing country; avoiding structural surpluses (overproduction leading to dumping, which has marred the CAP in the past), and, when it comes to CAP, awarding direct payments not based on the area of the farm, but rather per capita, thus rewarding sustainable small farms, ecological production methods, and difficult farming conditions.

When compared to the main debates over CAP in Brussels, capital of the European Union, these are radical proposals.

But the Commission is at least recognising the damaging impacts of export subsidies and has more recently started making efforts to connect its work on development and agriculture, by putting more focus on offering EU financial support for strengthening local food production capacities in developing countries, beginning with Eastern Europe and North Africa.

These steps could be a small start, if they are not hampered by further political manoeuvring.

(END)

Excerpt:

Mechanisation was expected to transform agriculture in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s central province of East Kasaï. But a project to offer tractors for ploughing land has fallen flat.

Meanwhile, many households don’t have enough to eat because agricultural production in this mineral-rich province is too low.

Ghislain Mudila, a smallholder farmer with a half-hectare farm near Lupatapata, north of Mbuji Mayi, the capital of East Kasaï, accuses politicians and the provincial administration of promising to make tractors available to everyone, but in the end distributing them to big farmers who already enjoy ample financial resources.

“They promised us tractors, but they are only serving themselves; why bother?”

He said he continues to provide for his family thanks to his hoe, inherited from his father.

Mudila had expected the promised tractors would be available to help him plough his plot for free. He said that would encourage smallholders to progressively abandon the hoe, because they would all like to cultivate larger plots and produce more.

Back in 2007, the provincial governor proclaimed agriculture the “priority of priorities”. The announcement was greeted warmly by farmers, who saw this as a new beginning for the agriculture and livestock sectors, which had declined steadily for three decades, following the liberalisation of artisanal diamond mining in 1982.

Many of East Kasaï’s residents abandoned farming, attracted by the easy profits promised by mining precious stones. Today, in the province’s major towns and cities, everything is bought at the market, and prices are high, said Antoine Mpoyi, a resident of Mbuji Mayi.

The national government wanted to modernise agriculture in this province, and in 2009 bought 100 tractors. But three years later, production of staple foods (maize, cassava, rice and black-eyed peas) in East Kasaï fails to meet the needs of the province’s six million people.

According to the provincial ministry of agriculture, the province required some 6.9 million tonnes of food in 2011, but the total harvest that year was only 6.3 million tonnes.

Despite the deficit, some of this output was exported clandestinely to neighbouring provinces, creating shortages, aggravating food insecurity, and driving up prices in local markets. For example, the price of maize has remained high over the past year – around 80 cents a kilo.

“The provision of tractors has not been well managed,” said Felly Muambayi, from the Project for the Rehabilitation of the Agricultural and Rural Sectors. “Their arrival coincided with the preparations for the 2011 elections and politicians seized on the programme as an opportunity to campaign.”

He told IPS that only 60 of the 100 tractors were still operating, with the rest lacking spare parts. “They should have been given directly to the real beneficiaries instead of going through the members of parliament, and traditional and religious leaders.”

The Rural Agriculture Management Council, charged with managing the tractors, criticised the involvement of politicians in the distribution process. “Proper procedure was not respected,” said coordinator Isidore Tshibanza.

He proposed the prior identification of real users, the strengthening of their capacities, and the signing of performance contracts for better results.

“They charged me 35 dollars per hectare to rent a tractor, besides the charge for the tractor operator and his assistant. I also had to pay for 40 litres of diesel at 2.50 dollars per litre. It was too expensive for me,” Mudila told IPS.

“We are in a diamond-rich province where people have lost sight of how agriculture works,” said Tshibanza. “It makes no sense to want to have access to the tractor service for free. The tractors have to be maintained and their parts replaced.”

He suggested smallholders need to be encouraged to group themselves into cooperatives. “That would reduce costs. People have to be re-educated about agriculture before trying to mechanise.”

In fact, the terms under which the tractors can be accessed exceed the resources available to smallholders practicing subsistence agriculture.

The provincial minister for agriculture, Roger Tshilombo, has just ordered that all the tractors be recalled and allocated afresh. He conceded that they have not improved agricultural output as hoped. Once they’ve been recalled, the tractors will be immobilised while waiting for reassignment for the growing season which begins in August.

An agriculture ministry report published in 2011 suggested that increasing the average size of farms would be the best way to reduce food insecurity in the province.

According to this report, 18,400 hectares of arable land have been handed over to farmers since 2009. But production has fallen short of demand due to poor rainfall, a lack of agricultural inputs and technical means, and soil degradation. The province has more than two million agricultural households.

The provincial government intends to channel its energies towards agroforestry, reforestation, the regulation of bush fires and finding quality fertilisers to benefit producers.

Bavon Mbuyi, a local politician, told IPS: “We believe that if the government had better policies, agriculture would be attractive to many people. They would shift from subsistence farming to industrial or commercial agriculture and do worthwhile business in the province.”

Junior Toe (right) discusses farming techniques with a graduate of the community youth network programme's agriculture school. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Travis Lupick
MONROVIA, Jun 11 2012 (IPS)

With his gold chain, baseball cap, and baggy denim shorts, Junior Toe wears the uniform of Liberia’s urban youth. Spend just a few minutes with the young man and it is evident that he possesses the street smarts to match the look.

However, Toe’s area of expertise lies outside the city and on the farm.

“Look at the pepper seed there,” he says while touring a community farm not far from downtown Monrovia. “Put it in the ground, water it a few times, and you will make some money.”

Toe is the founder and executive director of the Community Youth Network Program (CYNP), which trains young people in agriculture and livestock farming.

“Over there, we have a nursery for cabbages,” he continues. “If you try and grow cabbage in the ground now, the rains will give it a hard time. This is the kind of knowledge we share.”

Food security and meaningful employment for Liberia’s youth have long been major challenges for this West African nation. Now, a number of community-based programmes and government initiatives are working to address both. Officials say they are hopeful that this is the start of a major shift in how young Liberians participate in the agricultural sector.

According to a 2010 report by the United Nations Development Programme, 30 percent of Liberia’s land is arable and close to 90 percent of crop areas receive adequate rain. Yet according to the Liberia Food Security Outlook report for 2012, 60 percent of the population is classified as “food insecure”.

Liberia’s agricultural sector was devastated by decades of mismanagement and war. In 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe seized power in a coup and his rule, which ended 10 years later, was characterised by incompetent policies that hindered development.

In 1989, the country broke out in a civil war that continued sporadically until 2003. Those years saw warlord – and later, president – Charles Taylor plunder the country’s resources and fuel violence that killed 250,000 people. Even greater numbers fled Liberia or were repeatedly displaced.

According to a 2009 assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), between 1987 and 2005 the production of the country’s staple food, rice, fell by 76 percent.

“Agricultural production has increased in recent years as the sector slowly recovers, but yields are still well below the regional average and food insecurity is high,” the document states, adding that Liberia still only produces roughly 40 percent of the rice it needs to feed its almost four million people.

Also affected by the conflict were Liberia’s youth, tens of thousands of whom were coerced into joining rebel factions when they were just boys and girls. Rehabilitation projects run by the U.N. attempted to reintegrate ex-combatants and victims of the war, but those programmes are now widely criticised as failures.

“I went through the disarmament process, through the one week of training,” Toe says, chuckling.

“But many people really never took advantage of that….The men were traumatised; they were used to the gun, used to money, and used to getting what they wanted fast.”

Toe says that after seeing the shortcomings of the rehabilitation programmes, he set out to launch his own, one that would be better suited to Liberia. He reasoned that with fertile soil and a warm and wet climate, agriculture was the way to go. So he founded the CYNP in 2007.

The organisation now has a training centre in Bensonville, Montserrado County (roughly an hour’s drive northeast of Monrovia). In the county, land is divided into eight farms where former trainees and partners manage plots on either their own property or on community land. The Young Farmers Forum keeps participants connected and works to create awareness and attract new recruits.

Crucial to CYNP’s success, and what sets it apart from the U.N.’s past work with ex-combatants, is an emphasis on ownership. “We work with you to develop your own project in your community where you manage it,” Toe says.

According to Toe, there are currently around 100 youths enrolled in six-month long programmes at the Bensonville facility, and as many as 500 graduates are now farming in communities around Montserrado.

A number of those graduates can be found working a plot of unused government land in the Fiamah neighbourhood of Monrovia. Alfred Kapehe says that CYNP helped him progress from subsistence agriculture to smallholder commercial farming. Likewise, James Paylay says the small farm he keeps brings in enough money for him to rent a home, feed his family, and pay his children’s school fees.

“Everything comes from the garden,” Paylay says.

Liberian Deputy Minister for Youth Development Sam Hare acknowledged an often-cited USAID (the U.S. government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance) statistic indicating that just three percent of Liberian youths are interested in farming. But, in an interview with IPS, he maintains that the situation is changing.

“Agriculture has been identified as the key to breaking the youth unemployment challenge,” he says.

“We have been working with the Ministry of Agriculture and other stakeholders to make people see that agriculture, viewed in the right perspective, is a tool for wealth.”

Hare says that the challenge is to convince young people that they can take farming beyond a subsistence level and make a commercial enterprise of it.

“Our vocational training priorities now need to be redefined and restructured to meet the real needs of Liberia. And youth and agriculture should be the focus,” he adds.

Joseph Boiwu, a FAO programme officer for Liberia, says that another impediment slowing youths’ entry into agriculture is the labour-intensive nature of the work. To address this problem the FAO and partners distributed 24 power tillers to small groups of farmers in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties in 2010.

“We’re going to now reassess the interest of the youth,” Boiwu says. If the initiative is deemed a success, it could grow to include heavy machinery such as tractors.

Prince Sampson, head of Youth for Development and Progressive Action in Bong County in north-central Liberia, describes a programme his organisation runs that is similar to the CYNP’s. Like Toe, he says that he learned from the mistakes of post-war workshops that failed to make long-term investments in people.

“The ex-combatants had training in carpentry, masonry, and other skills,” Sampson says.

“And then after that, there wasn’t anything substantial for them to do. You had them trained, and then they didn’t have a source of income. So they went back to square one.”

Sampson, who has worked with war-affected youth since 1992, maintains that agriculture is different because there is an element of immediate responsibility.

“The guys…They eat the very rice they grow. The vegetables are sold, the proceeds are divided among them, and they have some cash for their pockets.”

Sampson describes the importance of involving the country’s former combatants in agriculture as a matter of food security.

“We make them understand the usefulness of the years still ahead, in spite of the years that were wasted during the war,” he says.

“We let them understand that the strength they had – their youthful exuberance – can still be harnessed.”

*Additional reporting from Al-Varney Rogers in Monrovia.

(END)

Papua New Guinea is a natural habitat for diverse food crops and wild plants. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Jun 6 2012 (IPS)

Papua New Guinea’s high fertility rate is exerting pressure on land and food production in a country where 80 percent of the population lives in rural communities. But the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) argues that traditions of subsistence agriculture provide a firm foundation to build food security for a growing population.

Papua New Guinea, a fertile island nation in the South Pacific, is a natural habitat for diverse food crops and wild plants. Most people in rural and peri-urban areas grow their own fruit and vegetables for consumption, while in rural villages selling agricultural produce can be a significant source of income.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the nation’s strong agricultural sector could easily ensure food security, with agricultural exports of 882 million dollars exceeding imports of 425 million dollars. Furthermore, the country has an agricultural labour force of five million, out of a population of 6.9 million people.

However, Sim Sar, programme director of agricultural systems improvement at NARI, warns, “Food production is not keeping pace with population growth. Approximately 42 percent of the population in rural and urban areas are unable to meet a target food energy requirement of 2000 calories per person per day.”

The fertility rate in Papua New Guinea is 4.6 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), compared to the average fertility rate in developed countries of 1.7 births per woman. The National Research Institute (NRI) predicts the current population could rise to seven million by 2014 and 8.5 million by 2024.

Attaining food security will entail addressing both population growth and agricultural productivity.

The UNFPA’s 2011 State of World Population Report emphasises, “In many parts of the developing world, where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great.”

Contraceptive prevalence in Papua New Guinea is 24 percent, while the regional range in the Pacific Islands is 20.5-46.1 percent, lagging well behind the 62 percent average in all other developing countries.

Distant rural communities and under-resourced rural health centres are obstacles to the dissemination of family planning materials and services.

Russel Kitau, Chair of Public Health at the University of Papua New Guinea, believes too many people ask, “Why should the government stop (us) from having many children? Who is going to take care of (us) when we get old? Is it the government?”

“Another (obstacle) is the fear that the side effects of contraception might cause cancer,” he continued, adding that some people believe women’s use of contraceptives could encourage infidelity.

Through the National Health Plan (2011-2020), the government aims to expand free family planning coverage and improve sexual and reproductive health for adolescents.

“We are doing our best to train our health workers to go back to the health centres and implement the family planning programme,” Kitau explained. “But funding for family planning is very low compared with programmes for (prevention and treatment of) HIV/AIDS. The small amount of donations and funding from development partners is not sufficient or sustainable in the long run.”

A large and growing population will be a reality for years to come in Papua New Guinea and Sar believes the agricultural sector must be at the centre of strategies to ensure sustainable nutritious food supplies.

“Agriculture in PNG is the primary source of food security,” he explained. “Hence the key strategy to attain food security is the enhancement of productivity, efficiency and stability of agricultural production systems.”

A socio-economic farmer survey conducted by the Fresh Produce Development Agency, which is tasked with developing a sustainable and commercially viable horticulture industry, reported that farmers grow an average of 4.7 commonly cultivated crops for sale, including sweet potatoes, bananas, tomatoes, taro, peanuts, beans, corn, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cassava, cucumbers and pawpaws.

When questioned about challenges to productivity, 65 percent of growers identified pests and diseases, 32 percent cited the high price or shortage of fertilisers and seeds, while 22 percent blamed bad weather.

In order to boost production of local foods, as well as conserve crop diversity, NARI has released 27 new farming technologies since 2003. These include high yielding and disease tolerant banana varieties; drought tolerant sweet potatoes; upland rice varieties; improved peanut production methods; pest control technology packages for bananas; methods of controlling taro beetle with insecticides; and drought coping strategies.

Land is central to agricultural productivity and sustaining lives in the developing world, especially when, in times of poverty, people turn to land-based resources for sustenance. Most land in Papua New Guinea is held under customary tenure and has not been surveyed or registered, so there are disputes over land access and rights.

According to the NRI, land registration and secure land titles encourage efficient land-use, provide access to competitively priced credit and create incentives for investment, thereby enhancing agricultural productivity.

Land registration would also allow for easier and more robust exchanges of land between parties, thereby making land which is not being utilised accessible to those who need it.

“Though 80-90 percent of land is under customary tenure, not everyone has access to land due to uneven distribution (among) clan members, migration and death,” Sar added. “Hence the number of landless people is increasing, particularly those residing in urban areas or those in marginalised and disadvantaged areas.”

Only by investing now in family planning, agriculture and land reform will Papua New Guinea ensure a sustainable future for the next generation.

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