6. The trial site: Farm Alstonia

In this chapter we select Farm Alstonia, Port Moresby as the trial site.
Our 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.  
The 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 the young pigs.  It really depended on how much capital could be found.

Before could get to this stage we had to show that we could successfully grow pigs on a kau kau silage diet. Even then we had a difficult road ahead. There was no meat processing, storage, wholesale or retail cold chain infrastructure at all in Hela province. There was no formal market nor trading mechanism.  Everything; the sow farm, village pig houses, the abattoirs, the boning room and meat processing facility, butchers shop, delivery network, farmer training and customers had to be built from scratch. The breeding stock had to be imported from Port Moresby and we had to staff the business, the abattoir, processing facility, the butcher shops and the cash vans that would extend the retail network.

We thought the best way to start was with a six-month trial to demonstrate that we could at least produce pigs successfully by feeding  kau kau silage supplemented with a protein mineral premix.  Accordingly, we sought to build or lease a pilot facility.  First get the pigs, feed them the diet, see if they grow and then set about processing some cuts of meat and test the market to prove the viability of the value chain.  Oil Search Limited agreed with this approach and agreed to fund the project.

After a protracted negotiation we were able to satisfactorily conclude a leasing agreement with Rimbink Pato to demonstrate the proof of concept on his Farm Alstonia at 17 Mile, Sogeri Rd, Port Moresby.

Farm Alstonia showing the main shed and water tank,
in the dry season
There was a road into the farm which was set in a fenced compound of 2.5 hectares.  It had two houses, a small office and mess area that we could secure, a dirt floored sow house that could hold about 80 sows and five boars, a second shed that housed sows and weaners and growing and finishing pigs and poultry shed. There were a couple of concrete aprons. It had power. Water was supplied from a bore. We needed to do some work on the water supply to the trial pens, but it met the criterion for a trial facility.  The pens were the same size, so each pen (of six pigs) could be allocated to a treatment.

The arboretum at Farm Alstonia, wet season













The most appealing aspect of the farm was an arboretum about 0.25 ha planted to a variety of fully grown young tropical trees. It provided a beautiful backdrop to the farm mess and office area.
We needed the place bare to start with. I didn’t want the risk of any of the original pigs spreading disease to the trial pigs.  If the trial worked we thought we could select breeding stock from them, grow them out and mate them. 

The source herd for the trial pigs was a nearby high health status herd so we should be able to retain that.  All we needed was a thorough clean of the pens and spelling them for some months in the Port Moresby heat. We needed about three people to manage the trial but on the day that we arrived for our inspection, Liam, John and I were confronted with 12 staff members all worried about their jobs.  It didn’t need to be pointed out that an aid NGO and a large oil company firing most of the farm work force at the beginning of a major developmental aid project was a bad look.

In the next blog we prepare the  Farm Alstonia site for the trial and the pigs arrive













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

9. Raising pigs in a village pig house.

Image
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 ...
Read more

13. Staff

Image
Farm Alstonia was a little united nations of PNG.    It's people came from everywhere.    While the core staff were islanders from New Britain and New Ireland, Kulaka, Yuti, Layu and John were Hulis from the Southern Highlands, Dulland from Bulolo, Lester from Sepik, Freddie, Kedo, Jerry from Milne Bay and Samon from Enga Joyce Pato had started the farm as a philanthropic venture 2007. Originally it was a kind of  halfway house to assist young men who found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The farm became part home, part training centre, part job when they had served their punishment.  When she and Rimbink bought the place it was a mixture of bush and kunai grass. Kulaka, a Southern Highlander, was Joyce's first employee. Joyce organised construction of a dormitory for the young men. Bit by bit she and Kulaka with the help of subcontractors built  pig and chicken houses and other amenity blocks and houses. Joyce's niece Lyn Mantu p...
Read more

14. Wonderland Agristock limited

Image
  For those who came in late…..   This story is about a project to use modern animal husbandry approaches to grow pigs efficiently in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The back ground is provided in blog chapters 1-13. This chapter (14) describes the next stage from an experiment near Port Moresby to implementation in Hela province. After we wound up the proof-of-concept part of the program, it took a while to get to the next stage.  The plan had always been to base a commercial project in Hela Province and launch a business that would provide jobs for the local people and be profitable.  At some point we had to take the program to the Hela.  It could never achieve its objectives if it remained in Port Moresby.  Our modelling indicated that the program could be profitable.  Even better it would contribute of the order of PGK 5000 (~AUD 1,800) per household for the supply of kau kau (sweet potato), caring for the pigs and a maintenance fee for the ...
Read more