Jackson Kalses describes himself as a small-time farmer in east Efate, the island in which Port Vila, the national capital of Vanuatu sits.
From the income he gets from his vegetable farm of mainly cabbage, tomato and beans, Kalses provides for his young family including his three children who currently attend elementary school.
“I have up to five hectares of land but I only farm about one hectare of that,” Kalses tells me on the corridors of Vanuatu’s National Conference Centre, one of the venues of this week’s Pacific Week of Agriculture.
“I’ve been farming for the last two to three years now, selling mostly to supermarkets and to the Central Market in Port Vila sometimes. I also do sell some vegetables to Iririki Island Resort, but I’m not a big supplier.”
The Efate grower and I were talking after a break from the two-day long ‘Linking to Markets’ seminar for Vanuatu growers. His country’s ministry of agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries and bio-security is hosting the training with support from the Pacific Community’s Land Resources Division.
As if reading my mind, Kalses didn’t wait for my next question as he remarked: “My biggest problem is water. During the off-season, I am unable to grow many vegetables due to lack of rain.
“This usually happens during the months of August to December every year. That’s when I hardly have any vegetables to sell, which is bad for me because the shortage of vegetables causes prices to shoot sky high.”
He said the good months are the wet seasons of January to July each year. But the abundance of vegetables while good for customers becomes a nightmare to growers like Kalses as the oversupply naturally sees prices hitting rock bottom.
To overcome the challenge, the northern Efate landowner and farmer says he is now opting for cash crops that grow well in drier conditions. The crop of choice for him is pineapple.
“The other way around the dry soil is for government to assist us with irrigation or at least give us water tanks. Another way around the problem would be drilling bore holes, something that is too expensive for small growers like myself.”
Sitting next to Kalses during the interview were Reuben Maramo and John Karai. Although both are originally from the outer islands of Vanuatu, the two men are farmers and live with their families in southeast Efate.
Maramo and Karai are into freshwater ‘tilapia’ fish breeding and sell these by the roadside next to their farms. They said that like Kalses, they also grow pineapples to supplement their income.
“I like this training on linking growers like us to the markets as it helps me develop new ideas,” added Kalses.
The first-ever Pacific Week of Agriculture will culminate with a meeting of heads of agriculture and forestry of SPC member nations today and ministers of agriculture and forestry of the Pacific on Friday.
SPC and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are supporting the Government of Vanuatu hosts the Pacific Week of Agriculture.
The two meetings together with the first-ever Pacific Week of Agriculture are expected to provide the much-needed platform for engagement and discussions that should pave the way for better linkages between farmers and the markets, or between tourism, trade and agriculture.
“We need to expose our farmers to opportunities that are available,” Matai Seremiah Nawalu, Agriculture Minister of Vanuatu and host of this year’s Pacific Week of Agriculture told Islands Business’s October 2017 edition.
“We need to rally them to increase their productions. While we often talk about the need to increase exports-and this is important. There is also a huge need to produce enough to satisfy local demands.”
The idea for such a week to promote agriculture in the region started in October 2014 by then agricultural minister of Vanuatu David Tosul and his Director General for agriculture Howard Atu. Both were attending the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) in Suriname.
“We were at this luncheon,” then DG Atu recalled. “The minister leaned over to me and said, ‘DG, what do you think if I propose that Vanuatu host something like this?’ I said ‘I think that’s a great idea.’
“The minister stood up during the course of the luncheon and publicly announced Vanuatu’s interest in hosting something similar to CWA. Partners picked up the declaration almost immediately and that was the birth of PWA.”
Both men were part of the opening ceremony of PWA on Monday this week and Atu is Coordinator of PWA 2017.....PACNEWS
Photo Dept blong Agriculture. Caption: Farmers from Tanna with carrots grown on their farms