National Food Security is much more than agricultural issue.

J. Roughan

27 April 2010

Honiara              

Last week Vanuatu hosted a Pacific Island agricultural minister's conference with many food experts in attendance. For a full week, serious toktok about Food Security became the focus of their discussions. Every island nation of the region, they agreed, currently faces growing serious food shortages. Island populations without exception are expanding fast and more and more scarce lands are pulled into production  to feed all these new mouths. Yet outside food sources have not only become more expensive but are more and more unreliable to import.

 

Less than two years ago in 2008, for instance, Solomon Islanders stared in shocked disbelief at the cost of rice in stores. Right in front of their eyes a 20k bag of Solrise went from well below $200 to over that mark in a matter of weeks. People's beloved rice, the food which had become daily fare at the nation's food table and been taken for granted, had literally climbed out of reach for many local people.

 

Immediately ordinary town people as well as those from the countryside, from every walk of life, began pressurizing government to do something, to get new sources of rice, do something anything so as to reduce the great rice price hike. Unfortunately, across the whole world--India, China, Indonesia, etc.--were also feeling the same effects of the great rice price hike. In fact, it was only in the latter part of 2009 that rice prices began to slowly come down since new sources of this grain were now entering the market. But the lesson was there for all to learn: food security and secure, sound living are national worried and have to be worked on at a national level.

 

Fortunately, even today we in the Solomons have always enjoyed a back up position. Our women gardeners, masters at root crop production,  produce potato, yam, pana, tapioca, etc. in great variety and output. Our fertile land, availability of abundant rain water and especially our skilled food producers churn out tons and tons of these precious goods without costing the nation a penny. Few of our farmers use pesticides, fertilizers and insecticides and yet they feed the majority of our people.

 

Only recently, for instance, during the Social Unrest period--1998-2003--when the nation's political elite were dithering and offering precious little leadership, most villages fed themselves. Our small farmers, fishermen and food/fruit gathers jumped in to fill the gap. Through painful political turmoil, a partial civil war on Guale's Weather Coast and unrest in Honiara, the bulk of people fed themselves, not so much with rice, flower and other imports but what they planted and harvested from their own gardens. 

 

Now leaders of the country are beginning to grasp that to bring about food security means organizing, assisting and empowering the villager, especially the woman gardener, to produce greater amounts and different kinds of food to feed our growing population. Of course they can and are already planting, caring for and harvesting serious rice production. But the best scenario when it comes to local rice production must be counted in decades, not in months.

 

Our yearly import bill for rice remains close to $200 million which the nation can not afford. That is why planting, caring for and harvesting our own rice production is a smart way to go. But before we reach that level of rice production the nation depends upon its most productive sector for food production, the village woman. Yet, simply to ask her to produce more root crops is not enough. She must be assisted to get her production to the market place where she can receive a reasonable reward for her labor.

 

During the first days of the Ulufa'alu government in 1997, he commissioned SIDT to conduct a national survey: Government  Investing in People's Lives.  Almost 13,000 people across the nation were asked to pinpoint the best place for government to invest monies to increase people's chances to gain a bit of prosperity. Their first choice in Resource Investment was for government to focus on people's gardens  Closely following was for the government to set up markets where villagers could bring garden production for sale. And second in their investment priorities was a system of robust shipping to get farm produce to these markets.

 

Here we are more than a dozen years afterwards and through five governments of the day and still they have failed to listen to people's priorities. Of course Food Insecurity grows more and more serious. Our recent history tells us that the market place with its rising prices, distance and unreliability is the last place we can place our trust. If we had no local capability, little fertile ground and hardly any rain, we would be in serious trouble. Yet, the nation has been truly blessed with all of these for abundant food production. The two last governments have said much about the Bottom Up Approach and Rural Advancement. Well, here in the person of the woman gardener is a perfect place to put rhetoric into action.