Farmers In Samoa Feel Left Out

Written by Pio Sioa
Saturday, 08 March 2008
Aioluotea Jeff Atoa : Samoa Farmers Association Secretary Treasurer inside his backyard 'plastic tunnel nursery' Farmers are not a happy bunch of people because they are not getting the kind of attention other sectors like tourism are enjoying in the larger scheme of national development. “We are a left out sector in development,” Aiolupotea Jeff Atoa told Newsline this week in response to a noticeable stir of new changes in farming practices, like shrinking plantation sizes. Aiolupotea is the Secretary Treasurer of the Samoa Farmers Association, with a registered membership of up to 200 farmers. “The Gross Domestic Product in Agriculture has dropped from 16 per cent to about 6 per cent and continuing to decline, and yet this is a sector that is supposed to be the backbone of development for the country,” he noted. “No sector plan was also included in the 2005- 2008 national development plan for agriculture.” Overseas remittances, tourism and nonu juice are the main foreign exchange earners for Samoa at the moment, replacing traditional earners like fish, taro and copra that has long disappeared from the scene. Ingrained problems like pest and diseases, natural disasters and limited access to overseas markets are major setbacks that have reduce the earning capabilities of the agricultural sector. Other established obstacles stunting the longterm growth of the sector are a subsistence mindset, and a generally low regard for agriculture as a respectable lifetime career for the educated generation. Aiolupotea is however one of the new breed of farmers, promoting a new approach towards commercialized farming he believes will work, if the support of Government is available. “The sector needs incentives to boost growth like doing away with tariffs on things like fertilizers or chemicals for local farmers to compete against cheaper imports. “Animal feed costs for example are so high local products end up being more expensive than imports - our farmers cannot compete against that.” Aiolupotea is convinced that the future of agriculture in Samoa is in integrated cropping, where farmers are encouraged to spread out into planting a variety of crops. He feels encouraged with how the new trend appears to be catching up in the rural farming community, as discovered in a recent inspection by the Government promoted, Talomua Scheme. “Concentrating on one crop is risky, we’ve seen that with the taro plight wiping out the taro industry. “ Passion fruit and ginger suffered similar fates when the bottom fell off in overseas markets, catching out the big rush made by farmers while the prices were good.” Aiolupotea also echoed a general feeling in the farming community that farmers are blamed when they failed and are subsequently abandoned, yet the initiative came from Government. “Integrated cropping takes the risk away from market prices dropping or pests and diseases destroying crops. “ But there is still room for a return to big taro plantations – Samoa is very close to producing a new plight resistant variety of taro that is very close to ‘talo niue’. “Once we’re happy with the quality we can produce we should look at mass producing that and getting ourselves back into the market.” Aiolupotea believes that should be the trend farming in Samoa should take. While multi-farming offers versatility for farmers, they can still mass produce crops that offer better economic returns at the same time. “Right now we have 80 per cent of our land that is under utilized, so that should give farmers enough room to expand if they want to. “ Making those land available on lease to farmers for commercialized farming is another important factor that has to be considered as well.” Another suggested approached was for the encouragement of model farmers, to motivate other farmers. “ This was the kind of approach carried out with beach fale tourism – the same could work with model farmers. “ Give these farmers the kind of support they need like equipment, planting materials and other incentives, so they can be successful because other farmers will want to follow their example, just as we now see with the beach fale approach in tourism.”Aiolupotea is confident that the low regard for agriculture as a respectable lifetime career, can be overcome if encouraged at the secondary school level. “Agriculture science should be introduced into schools and should be made a compulsory course for students to take. “Students would be encouraged to go home and start off their own small vegetable gardens and learn to appreciate what they can do, and continue on from there.”The suggestion for the Ministry of Agriculture is to improve the focus on areas where they can encourage production, sustainability and marketing for farmers. Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment Name Email Title Comment

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