How PNG agriculture drives a nation
Updated
Agriculture is the most important activity carried out by most Papua New Guineans and dominates life physcially, culturally, economically, socially and nutritionally. And yet it is undervalued and a misunderstood part of life in PNG.
That's according to a new book by Michael Bourke from the Australian National University called "Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea" and sets out to explode 20 myths about agriculture.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Dr Mike Bourke, Department of Human Geography at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
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BOURKE: I think that PNG's a food deficit nation and that food imports are growing. Most of this we've put up front driven by urban people. If you look at a list of 185 countries in the world, PNG is actually the least urbanised, incidentally Australia is the most urbanised outside of Hong Kong and the Vatican. But PNG's really a rural nation and the rural majority, whatever the rural majority do that actually drives the country. But the people that have access to the press etc., and to power are in the urban areas. So for example there's a myth that Papua New Guineans live on rice. Well there's certain people do live on urban rice, which used to come from Australia once but now comes from Asia. But in fact the rural majority do not live on rice, they live on sweet potato, banana, sago and other root crops.
COUTTS: Well the point needs to meet that around 81 per cent of PNG's population is living in the rural sector and only Rwanda, Bhutan, Nepal and Uganda have a greater proportion of people living in rural areas than PNG. Now this is going to sound strange but when you were writing the book, and the point comes up a bit in there, is that something that the government actually either ignores or doesn't understand itself?
BOURKE: I don't think they ignore it but agriculture ticks away in the background. Certainly subsistence agriculture and food production is generally, it's pretty much, it's out of sight and basically the huge number of people - we talk about over a million households in the rural area - who produce food. They produce most of their own food and it quietly happens, the women and the men do it, and most of this is not marketed. A very tiny proportion of this goes through the formal markets, we're talking about one or two per cent. So it happens in the backgrounds. So I think because it's invisible it tends to be undervalued.
COUTTS: Well land tender next and there are some economists who've lamented the fact that PNG's agricultural industries are held back by customary ownership, in fact 97 per cent of the land is customary owned, customary tenure. You looked at that as well and there's no value adding?
BOURKE: That's right. We don't see that as an issue. I mean I do a lot of field work in Papua New Guinea and when I listen to people talk about the constraints; they talk about transport, they talk about security, sometimes they talk about credit, they talk about labour availability, and they talk about all the things in their lives at the household level. There might be a fight between brothers or whatever it is, but you never, ever hear people talk about not having access to the land in the customary situation. Now that is not true of people who are trying to get access to very large areas of land, and they can get around this, the oil palm companies can get around this. There's a system called lease-leaseback. It's cumbersome but it's possible. We just don't see that as a major constraint at all frankly.
COUTTS: And what about population increase, 2.5 per cent per year growth rate?
BOURKE: It's actually the inter-census growth rate from 1990-2000 is 2.7, and that's the official growth rate in PNG. And that's high, I mean the 2000 census the population was 5.2 million people. In the first census, which was '66 it was less than half that, it was 2.5 million people. So it's gone from 2.5 million people to 5.2, and the current estimates from the Secretariat of Pacific Commission is about 6.5, 6.7 million mark. So yes the population's growing very rapidly.
COUTTS: Another issue that you tackled; HIV-AIDS. You had one graph which gave statistics and detected cases and they were disproportionately high in the central gulf and southern highlands areas, but then the following page you had confirmed cases of HIV-AIDS, which was much lower than the previous graph?
BOURKE: Yes I'm not sure about that. Those statistics are some years old now, and the situation with HIV AIDS is changing rapidly. The broad pattern as I understand it now, the most recent data is that the epidemic is worst in Port Moresby and it's severe along the Highlands Highway, particularly in the Western Highlands and also in Morobe. So that's basically where people are mobile. I'd have to look at that section again. I think there might be a bit of difference between what you might be discussing there might be where people have diagnosed with the virus, HIV, and their place of origin, but I just have to look at that.
