5. We think it is possible to grow pigs commercially

In this blog we reach the view that the Highlands community will embrace a new piggery business. The market for fresh pork is growing and under supplied.  And we conclude that diet, pig management and training issues must be addressed through further research and testing.  

As everywhere, Southern Highlands villagers raising pigs for sale will only do so if they can raise them profitably.  Those who buy pork only do so if they can afford it.  Those able to afford pork will increase in number as the population of the provincial capital grows in a region growing more than 10%.  As production increases the price of pork will decrease and become more affordable. As has happened all over the world, those villagers able to find cost effective ways to produce pork and profit from it will raise and sell more.  Those less able to farm profitably will raise fewer pigs and look for other farm-based income generating endeavours. They may keep a pig or two for special events but not with a need to derive an income.

Tari market

Tari is the capital of Hela province, but it is still in its infancy.  The market was the main commercial centre for the villagers but there were several businesses selling construction equipment, tools, cement, timer and roofing iron.  A small number of trade stores sold a limited number of food items and mobile phones and Digicel phone cards.  The outdoor market not dissimilar to those in other parts of PNG and East Timor. Goods for sale were laid out on synthetic tarps on the ground.  Some women sat with their babies under umbrellas close to their produce.  It was a riot of colour.  There were separate sections in the market for fresh food, tinned food, tools, hardware, clothes and live animals (chickens and pigs). 

Bilums for sale Tari market

Bilums (locally made woven bags) for sale were hung on the boundary fence.  Liam bought a bilum and it attracted  huge interest, a big crowd gathered around to watch the transaction and provide lots of good natured local advice. Most of the enterprises selling chickens, vegetables, fruit and clothes were run by women but some men also operated stalls. They sold tools and hardware.  Some people were selling cooked food – hot dogs or plantain bananas cooked over an open fire.

Pig for sale in the Tari market

In the live pig market John Cook and I were looking at a tethered pig and John ventured that he thought it might weigh 65 kg.  A friend of the woman who owned the pig came up to me quietly and said, “Sir, the pig weighs 80K.”  They had weighed it that morning. The women selling pigs in the market had walked them there, controlling them with a loosely attached leg rope.  Then they sat down on the bare earth sometimes under an umbrella, with the pig tethered nearby, to wait for a customer.

It was clear my first plan of a central facility supplying little pigs to be fed grain based diets and grown out in small village pig houses would not work because grain was not available. Although there seem to be expanses or arable areas most of the terrain is just too steep for grain crops.On the other hand, but there was plenty of kau kau. On a dry matter basis, it has much the same nutritional v alue as wheat. The issue for us was, can the pigs eat enough of it to grow quickly and do we have to cook it as was local village practice. Further, any feeding regime had to be very simple. Could we use a single protein, vitamin and mineral premix fed at different levels to provide for the needs of growing pigs at different stages of their life?  We needed to test the idea.  Could we do it in the highlands?  Where else might be possible?  Could we rent any land?

Part of our plan was also to find out what resources the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) might be able to offer.  Precious little as we found out.  Their pig holding capacity was minimal.  Their staffing and district resources were also minimal.  Their operating budgets excluded extensive local travel.  

Michael Dom, the NARI and Univerity of Adelaide 
researcher
 working with silage.

The staff themselves were knowledgeable.  I had thought that we would probably have to cook the sweet potato to improve its digestibility. Michael Dom, who was doing a PhD at the University of Adelaide, had already done some work chipping sweet potato, and making silage out of it.  He said it worked a treat.  

Michael had stored his kau kau chips in plastic bags for as long as eight months and had fed it to pigs with no adverse effects. During our feasibility work we could detect no obvious change nor deterioration in our kau kau silage as it aged and our experience echoed Michael’s. He fed the kau kau silage 50:50 with a commercial grower diet and found that his experimental pigs grew quite well.His staff had chipped silage using bush knives but asking villagers to do that for the five tonnes of silage for their ten pigs was a big ask.

There were no training facilities for village pig farmers anywhere in PNG outside of a university level course. There used to be a highlands agricultural high school but that no longer had any pigs.  There were only two abattoirs in the area ­− at Hagen and one at Mendi about 4 hours away by truck but neither killed pigs. There were two feed millers in Lae but neither of them wanted to produce a protein mineral premix to our specification. A proof of concept project in the highlands was looking hard.

John Cook and Rimbink Pato (right) soon to be the
PNG  Minister for Foreign Affairs

As our ideas progressed we found ourselves examining a property near Port Moresby on the Sogeri Road at 17 Mile.  It was called “Farm Alstonia” and owned by Rimbink Pato an influential lawyer.  He was soon to be a member of parliament and Minister for Foreign Affairs in Peter O’Neil’s government. Liam had assisted Rimbink in the past and had established a strong friendship. He expressed great interest in our project and was keen to get involved.  We thought we should be able to cut up the kau kau tubers mechanically with a garden mulcher that we found on his farm.  The mulched kau kau should make excellent silage.  Others had done similar things with cassava silage in other parts of the world for cattle. 

We could see how Farm Alstonia could be used but conditions in the highlands were very different to Port Moresby.  Moreover, if we ran the trial in the highlands we would have the interest of local villagers and once we had the diet nailed down could try it out in some village sites. 

It was a time of huge optimism.  Natural Gas exports were just starting.  All the investment looked like it might amount to something.  There was excitement all round. Unfortunately, this was all before a series of administrative, political and strategic failures accrued to place the Southern Highlands in civil unrest, interclan violence and destruction of property.

OSL, in their wisdom, thought we would be safer in Port Moresby.  They were right.  There we had a site and staff available to help and ready access to accommodation.  The down side was that we were a long way from the highlands and our end users.  Further we had to import kau kau from Hagen at substantial cost and questionable quality and we were unable to gauge the likely level of highland participation. However, we were spared any violence to our animals and ourselves.  Our buildings were not burned down.  We did not have to witness running gun battles between the police and the clans.

Overall, either in the highlands or in Port Moresby, I was keen to get going.  We thought that the Highlands community would embrace a new piggery business. The market for fresh pork was growing and under supplied.  We were confident that international pig production bench marks could be approached in the highlands. And we concluded that diet, pig management and training issues must be addressed through further research and testing.  

Only then would we take our package of targeted interventions into the Hela province villages.

Our start was anything but auspicious.  Even as we left Hides helipad for Mora and Port Moresby our schedule was, already, hopelessly disrupted.  A provincial governor died that day. We were due to fly Port Moresby to Lae to meet the Nari resource people but all the flights to Lae were heavily booked because of the funeral and we were bumped from our flight.

In the next blog things get serious and we start getting ready for the trial at Farm Alstonia, Port Moresby.