Domil community looks to coffee alternative

THE Domil community in Jiwaka has proposed to Agriculture Minister Tommy Tomscoll, pictured, that they will rely on cassava as an  alternative cash crop if coffee is destroyed by the coffee berry borer.
They have a mini cassava mill that produces stock feed for chicken and pig, fish meal and flour.
Director of Domil Integrated Community Health and Development Programme Benard Gunn said cassava was a multi-purpose crop.
“The leaves, tubers and stem have very useful qualities and cassava is the solution to food security,” Gunn said,
“Cassava can be dried and stored away for a hundred years.
“It is an immediate alternative for coffee.”
He said Jiwaka had been declared an impacted province and if coffee trees were to be cut to contain the spread, small holder coffee growers would be affected.
“Coffee trees take three years to grow and small-scale growers will suffer for three years,” he said.
“That’s why cassava is the alternative crop to coffee.”
Gunn said every household owned a small coffee plot and they were not sure if their coffee trees were affected by the pest.
He reiterated that people’s livelihood depended on coffee.
“At Domil, we want to go large scale by buying cassava from Jiwaka, Western Highlands, Chimbu, Enga and other provinces, and process it into finished food products,” Gunn  said.
“We want to encourage people to grow more cassava and sell to us. Our equipment are small and because of unreliable power supply, we want to have a back-up power system.”
He said to go large-scale, they needed K3-4 million.
Tomscoll visited Domil on April 8, accompanied by chairman of Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC)board Joseph Kom and Jack Kulam, chairman of WHP/Jiwaka Smallholders Coffee Growers Association.
They were there to deliver the first instalment of K20 million to control the borer in Jiwaka.
Tomscoll said this was the first payment of the approved budget of K65 million by the Government.
“This will be paid soon to CIC to begin work on containing the borer,” Tomscoll said
“The borer is already in the country and we will not eradicate it completely but with training and use of chemicals, we can control it.”