15. Getting started with the model farms

 

Introduction

The project started to gather pace when the Wonderland Agristock Limited board met and started thinking about how they would implement the idea of producing pigs in the highlands.  People produce pigs all over the world.  Papua New Guineans have been doing it for 5000 years, so it’s not exactly rocket science.  For the idea to gain traction however the meat had to be produced at a competitive price otherwise local people would buy imported pork from the supermarkets and trade stores.  There would always be a market for whole pigs to meet social obligations and compensation but while these elements are a significant part of local life, the WAL business model relied on people eating pork as part of their meals each week.

Operational model

The plan is to produce the pigs, grow them out and kill them at a purpose-built abattoir in the highlands near Nogoli.  The highland towns of Goroka, Hagen, Mendi and Tari are all growing.  They serve a population of more than 220,000 people.  Tari, now a provincial capital is home to a growing population with a growing income.

The Israeli group, Innovative Agro Industry, have built a poultry layer farm near Koroba and are producing 12,000 eggs per day.  They use the manure from the birds on their vegetable gardens.  On another part of the same farm, they are also producing high quality vegetables using hydroponic technology.  The daily output of eggs is sold at the farm gate. IAI have developed an impressive investment record in PNG. They started with high quality hydroponic vegetables produced at their Eight Miles property near Port Moresby.  Their produce goes to hotels, supermarkets, and mining camps throughout PNG.

The IAI highlands project at Koroba has a broiler farm producing 2000 chickens per week on land near Piwa.  The birds are processed in an abattoir built on site.  And, like the eggs, the freshly killed chickens are sold at the farm gate.

IAI has demonstrated the demand for animal protein in the highlands.  The challenge is to produce the grain for the operation locally.  Shipping costs in PNG are high so drawing grain from the Markham valley is costly.  It’s a function of the geography, the climate, the quality of the road, road maintenance and local lawlessness.  It costs as much to ship a container of grain from San Francisco to Lae is it does from Lae to Tari. 

We think, with the right approach, we can engage the local villagers to grow livestock feed for us.  Sweet potato and cassava are the obvious choices but corn, and legume crops are also an option.  The local people all like the idea of growing pigs.  There is an opportunity for the villagers to make some money from growing crops to feed to pigs and for Wonderland Agristock Limited to make its money from supplying growing pigs, processing the pigs into pork, and selling the meat wholesale and retail throughout the highlands.

Engaging the villagers

Karen James had not long joined B4D as CEO.  She came from a systems thinking and banking background that provided the foundation for a unique talent for working on complex issues. She brought a new energy and passion to the project.   The hire of Noel Kuman got the highlands stage of the project off to a great start.

Noel is an expert in cocoa and fresh produce post-harvest research and development, rural agriculture extension and agribusiness. He spent eight years establishing fresh produce supply chains in PNG.

Noel and the WAL chair Larry Andagali toured the villages within about a half an hour’s drive of Nogoli, a district about 40 minutes’ drive from Tari.  Larry is an Arua man.  His clan area lies between Tari and Koroba but he grew up around Nogoli and has many friends there.

The villagers were very enthusiastic.  Over the period between August and November 2019 more than 1900 community members registered their interest.  Noel’s idea was to develop model farms where the villagers could work on small demonstration sites planting disease free kau kau root stock in raised beds which would drain well.  This area measured its rainfall in metres per year, so drainage had to be good.

                           Figure1. Larry Andagali engaging with villagers in the Nogoli district

Figure 2. Villagers attending an information meeting, Nogoli

Figure 3. Noel Kuman (right) with villagers checking cassava crops.

Noel was an inspiration and a motivator.  On the ten model farms where a small area of land had been made available, the villagers (up to 200 hundred at a time), gathered on Wednesday mornings to prepare the ridges for planting, test the soil for nutrients, plant, monitor for disease, weed and then harvest.  Based on early crop monitoring a crop of about 50 tonnes of kau kau would be harvested, Noel’s idea worked exceptionally well.  In Port Moresby I had struggled to get buy in from local people, but it was a different environment.  There, land was expensive and not many people around Port Moresby had much, least of all enough to grow ten tonnes of cassava or kau kau.  It was also unbearably hot and humid for the hard manual labour required.

Figure 4.  Model farm kau kau crops growing in raised beds.

In the highlands there is plenty of land.  It has a gentle climate.  Unemployment is very high. Here the villagers want a chance.  After the initial meetings articulating the purpose of the idea, follow up meetings in each community were held to brief people more fully about the project and how they might participate and benefit.

Potential early candidates for participation were identified.  These were community leaders; farmers with a minimum of year ten education.  Their farms were visited and measured to make sure they could resource the annual objectives of an area of farmland that could grow ten tonnes of sweet potato or casava to feed to 20 pigs.

In about 2020 Isidor Tisok joined  B4D as a field operations manager for the project.  Isidor had been trained by us during the proof-of-concept stage.  We needed him for his pig expertise, but he had wide ranging skills in crops and animal production.

Figure 5.  Isidor Tisok and a group of Model farmers outside their haus win

Week by week Noel and Isidor visited the communities.  They did a baseline survey so that over a period we could measure progress.  Together they worked with the villagers cultivating the land and preparing the raised beds to grow the crops.  Noel called them ridges but in crop production in the high rainfall areas of Australia we called them raised beds.  The main difference was that the rainfall in the highlands (about 2 metres annually) was four times what we might expect in the “high” rainfall areas in Australia.

A breakthrough occurred at Juni where about 300 community members signed up to the project, agreed to sell a parcel of land to WAL and in the interim while the sale was being formally settled, (an extended period of a year), they cleared a hectare of land and leased it to WAL.

Noel sourced high health status plants.  With the help of some casual labour, they grew the plants in a shelter they could keep insect free and multiply the vines before distributing them to the model farms.  These were innovation hubs where villagers could learn about crops and pigs.  In return for the land the owners were paid a retainer.  WAL agreed to pay for the crops.  Many people in the villages participated. 

Part of the deal involved construction of a haus win, a traditional house that formed a base for training activities. 

The model farms were an important part of the concept.  All up we need about 170 villagers to take the output from a 200-sow farm, about 3400 pigs per year. One model farm serves as a focal point for a network of about 12 family sites, each one producing about 20 pigs per year.  Instead of keeping a direct eye on 170 farmers, the farm operations manager would deal with 14 model farmers each of whom provides guidance for about 12 other villagers. END