Twelve young men who are members of Kingdom Builders are on a mission tour to Port Vila in preparation for employment in the Seasonal Work Program in Australia this year.
Kingdom Builders, consist of young men from different denominations on Vanua Lava, Banks.
These young men were given the opportunity to visit Tagabe Agriculture farm in Port Vila on Wednesday.
“The main purpose of our visit to Tagabe Agriculture farm is to gain first-hand information on how a large commercial farm operates and what activities are implemented and to explore research work done on different crops. Furthermore, to get expose to what we would experience in Australia and also to motivate these young people to engage fully in the Agriculture sector”, said Anlinbe Christoph, team leader of Kingdom Builders.
Mr Christoph said this is the first time ever for a big number of young men from Vanua Lava to travel to Australia on the regional seasonal workers scheme program.
“Our main aim for participating in the season workers program is to earn money that will go towards building churches around Vanua Lava and it is a mission work that we are committed to”, Mr Christoph said.
He added that the young men have learnt a lot of new ideas in farming after their visitation to the Tagabe Agriculture farm.
“We have gained a lot of information on the different varieties of kumala, taro, dwarf manioc and other varieties of yams that are resilient to climate change”, he said.
“We have also been introduced to a farming practice or a trial experiment of planting kava under gliricidia shades and intercropping with root crops like taro, banana, kumala and different propagation techniques such as pruning of second node and technique of planting kava using single node to increase planting materials”.
“After our tour today around the farm, I don’t think people should go to seasonal work in Australia and New Zealand because we can do the same work here in Vanuatu.”
“We can utilize our land wisely and focus on commercial farming to do farming as a business to improve our livelihoods through food security and income generation, so I would like to encourage young people to invest in Agriculture,” Mr Christoph said.
A member of Kingdom Builders, Tony Stackys, said after observing the work done at Tagabe Agriculture farm, he has a strong desire to invest in Agriculture after his return from seasonal work in Australia.
“The only reason why more young people are going to Australia and New Zealand is to earn huge amount of money to develop their communities, but I think we can still earn that same amount of money in Vanuatu if we are serious about our farming activities”, he said.
Phot supplied. Caption: Members of Kingdom Builders at Tagabe Farm