Developing the ideas to start pig production businesses in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

This post looks further at how we made and stored the kau kau and cassava silage during our trials at Farm Alstonia Port Moresby. There was substantial wastage from mould in the Kau Kau we bought in the Gordons' market Our cropping focus was on kau kau (more normally known elsewhere as sweet potato) because that was what villagers grew in highlands.  The land at Farm Alstonia, about 24 kilometres from Port Moresby, was not suited to kau kau.  We could grow kau kau leaves very well but there were few tubers on the plants. The fall back position was to buy kau kau from the Gordon's market in Port Moresby but when  the bags of kau kau arrived on the farm via the Highland traders many of the tubers were half rotten.    The staff trimmed them and, so they would fit into the mulcher chute, chopped them further.    They shoveled them into the machine and it chopped the tubers into fine chips that looked a bit like wet wood shavings.    For the first run of silage we line

These little pigs lived in a house of sticks…built to withstand a cyclone There is every reason that small groups of pigs will grow well on small holder farm sites. Once the matters of feed quality, health and genetics are covered it’s only a matter of space, water, hygiene, air quality and warmth when they're young. Pig house near Tari. The last wasn’t an issue in tropical Port Moresby.  We had water on tap, and while it could be an issue in the highlands we had good bore water on Farm Alstonia.  It was just a matter of building a pig house.  We had seen village pig houses on our trip to Hela province. They had mostly been built of scrap materials.  The floor boards had gaps wide enough to almost swallow a small pig or at do serious injury if a foot went through.  The wall boards or mesh went all the way up to the roof to prevent theft.   Water was provided once or twice day in buckets.  It might have been OK for one pig but not ten at a time and not for the 1

In this blog the feeding trial results are presented. Two dietary treatments were compared.  The pigs were randomly allocated to two groups. The control group was fed the standard commercial diets for weaner, grower and finisher pigs used on the 400 sow Boroma commercial farm just down the road. The test pigs were fed the fermented sweet potato (kau kau) tuber silage combined with a protein mineral premix at 30% of the diet from 12 weeks of age to 15 weeks and 25% from 16 weeks until 23 weeks.  We knew that the smaller pigs would struggle with silage feed intakes necessary to achieve the amino acid and energy intakes necessary to compete with the animals fed the commercial diets.  Since most feed is consumed by pigs more than 40 kg liveweight we wanted to see how these performed.  We were quite prepared to feed a commercial diet until at least ten weeks of age.  We could look more closely at the performance of the younger pigs later. In any case we had no choice because the r

In this chapter we adjust the business strategy, train staff, make silage and then the trial pigs arrived........ Although we needed only two or three people to run the trial, this was Papua New Guinea and more people, almost  by definition were required. Somehow we had to find work for the existing farm staff.  Desparate times,  desperate measures.  These measures came back to haunt us later. They cost us thousands of dollars. The starting B4D -Farm Alstonia staff. Back:  Miriam,Kedo, Isidor, Patrick,Joe Front: Lester, Jerry, Paul, Nerius, Kuwaya I adjusted the trial and business strategy and deployed a disease eradication plan for some remaining sows on the farm.   We kept about 40 middle parity sows to provide some cash flow and something for our staff to do while the trial was running and before the sows farrowed. We thought we might be able to eradicate mange ( a skin parasite) and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, an infectious respiratory pathogen.   I'd written  a book

In this chapter we select Farm Alstonia, Port Moresby as the trial site. O ur field research had indicated strongly that a village-based pig production business supplying a small regional abattoir and processing facility could develop in response to demand from the growing Hela provincial economy.   T he preferred plan was to invest in a sow farm that would produce the young pigs which the villagers would feed and grow to market in small village pig houses.   We  thought that we could manage the sow farm and ensure that there were always enough pigs in the system to supply the villagers. If we could not raise the capital for the sow farm, then we would develop a system where the villagers, individually or with pooled resources, could each own 10 sows and produce the young pigs.   This was higher risk, and less efficient in terms of scale, but could still work. The alternative was to find a partner willing to produce t he young pigs.   It really depended on how much capital cou