Market Day in Vanuatu

Quietly, so as not to wake her sleeping children, Mary Pakoa leaves the house. Packed ready just outside the door is this week's harvest from the garden she tends on the steep slopes up behind the village. Loading herself with the heavy, hand-woven baskets brimming with kumala (sweet potato), cucumber, manioc, plantains and island cabbage, she makes her way down through the silent village to the beach where other women are also ready. By first light, at 4.30 a.m., they are carefully loading the small boat that will speed them to the mainland. There a pick-up truck is waiting. After a three hour bumpy ride on coral roads they will reach the market and, hopefully, a good day's trading. Mary Pakoa is used to this weekly journey. "To be a farmer you have to be hopeful, otherwise you would never plant. In the same way we hope for a good day at market."

Credit: Susie Emmett

The population of Vanuatu has doubled in the last two decades. The main town, Port Vila, has quadrupled in size. On Vila's sea-front there is a majestic covered market house where, four days a week, up to two hundred sellers can rent a space to sit in shade with their wares, waiting for the customers who will make the hours of weeding and care worthwhile.

The market women push themselves hard and they push their land hard too. With 18 years' experience working with the Department of Agriculture, now as the Food Security Officer, Annick Stevens feels that many of the gardens that supply the market are in a serious state. "As the population has increased there is less good land to use. Before, there was always fresh land to move on to, but not anymore. The land has less time to be fallow and regain its fertility." Her office walls have posters advocating the use of legumes, both for inter-cropping with horticultural crops and for restoring fertility to exhausted land.

Surely artificial fertilizers would be a quick fix for falling fertility? "No, buying fertilizer is out of the question," Annick explains. "If there is a profit, it all goes for school fees and things like soap and cooking oil. There is no money left to invest in better seeds, let alone tools and inputs such as fertilizer." The value of all Vanuatu's agricultural commodities - copra, kava and coffee - have fallen, and obtaining cash for family needs makes many farmers sell everything they can from their vegetable gardens. "We have been warning farmers that selling everything leaves too little for a balanced diet for the family. We see that some who sell the best produce in the market have children who are malnourished."

For household food security as well as rural incomes, the government has pledged to advise farmers who supply the market on how to plant and produce top quality vegetables. But with Vanuatu's failing economy, and cuts in government expenditure under the donor-led Comprehensive Reform Programme to reduce public spending, the agricultural advisory services have collapsed. Seeds are often in short supply too. In the villages, step inside one of the small and sparsely-stocked stores and ask what vegetable seeds are for sale and you may find some Pak Choi Chinese cabbage. In the dry season there may be some tomato seeds too. But these foreign crops are seen as riskier than the indigenous roots, tubers and leafy crops that cost nothing to propagate and are far less vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather. The high humidity and heavy downpours in the wet hurricane season - from November to March - and the long dry season thereafter are too much for the tender exotics.

Tomatoes and other salad crops are, however, in demand all year round in the hotel restaurants and affluent homes in town. To meet that demand, a hydroponics farm, located on a high ridge in the north of the island, is drip-feeding tomato plants and salad leaves. The business sells all that it grows directly to hotels or to supermarket shoppers. But many businesses and wealthier households are also obtaining produce by air, and some of the larger hoteliers maintain that it is easier to get consistent and reliable supplies this way, even for produce that is available year-round in the market. Pleas by farmers to ban the import of produce that can be home-grown, at least while it is in season, have so far been ignored. Nevertheless, the regular air links to both Australia and New Zealand may yet prove to be more of a marketing opportunity than a problem.

On a hill to the south of the main harbour stands a newly-constructed warehouse. Inside it is being fitted out with produce-packing equipment. This business is promising rich returns to farmers for their indigenous island vegetables and fruits, which are expected to fetch high prices in the cities of Auckland, Brisbane and Sydney. Rumours of the types of taro and yam that will be wanted have already reached the market, but many of the growers trading there are sceptical that they will benefit from growing for export. "I think they will find excuses to say what I grow is not good enough," says Mary Pakoa. Certainly meeting Australian import specifications will be a major hurdle and expense for the exporters.

It is getting late now and the market is emptying of both customers and growers. Some of the women will sleep on mats in the market ready for a second day of trading but for Mary and the other women from Nguna it is time to pack up and head home. Was the expense and effort of being there worth it? "It's OK," she says. "I have made a bit more than the cost of the boat, the taxi fare and market fee. Hopefully next week will be better."

Article submitted by Susie Emmett