Food is a growing business

By TONY PALME
WOMEN from the Moge Nambka tribe in Hagen Central are helping other women to acquire organic food processing skills in order to create a sustainable livelihood for every family.
Instead of buying processed goods from the store, they now make their own flour, cake, butter, jams, biscuits, food flavours and many more by processing cassava, ginger, chilli, peanut, avocado, strawberry, tomato and turmeric.
The food is grown in their gardens and, when harvested, is processed at their production site known as Sun Valley Village Food Processing Center.
The facility uses a pumping/mixture drum and scrapers made from sheets of tins and plates.
They finished products, grade quality rich in vitamins and minerals, are then packed of high that can keep a family well fed; healthy and strong medically and financially.
Some of the products were sold within no time.
Cassava or ginger is grated anddried for some time and then mixed with store-bought ingredients to produce different powdery products.
I found out from my interview at Sun Valley village that cassava is multipurpose staple that can also be made into roasted cassava (crumbs) that can last 100 years. I already knew that that it can be turned into flour and cake.
The women’s long term plan is to build their own food processing factory that will buy and use only organic food to process into other finished products.
Processing centre coordinator Theresia Timbi, also one of the trainers alongside Regina Koi the assistant coordinator, said the main aim of the activity is to transfer skills training to illiterate grassroots women who can use the knowledge to feed their family and also sell to make money for their families other needs.
“Papua New Guinea is a very blessed country, rich in organic food plants which are found in the gardens and bushes. Some of these plants are not found anywhere else in the world.
“They have special qualities which have never been discovered. Some of the products which derive from these organic plants have special medicinal properties that can cure sicknesses and diseases, lengthen our life span, give us strength and are very healthy.
“Why our people continue to remain poor on their fertile land is because of lack of knowledge. Now that we have this knowledge, we want to transfer it to our womenfolk to use it, to know how to use these organic products and process it into finished products for household and commercial needs in order to sustain families,” Timbi said.
On Wednesday (Feb 15) the women held an exhibition of their products
The main guest to the fair was PNG Incentive Fund team and master trainer Fr. Joseph Sakite, a Ghanaian Catholic priest based at Mingende’s St Arnold Jensen Parish in Chimbu.
Fr. Sakite, apart from his priestly vocation in PNG in the last 24 years, has embarked on ensuring Papua New Guinean families in communities have enough healthy and nutritious food to eat and that they have enough money in their pockets for basic family’s needs.
He has trained Catholic women in Chimbu and other Highlands provinces on food processing skills, utilising locally grown food for domestic and commercial benefits.
He was pleased with Timbi and Koi who he trained in 1996 in partnership with Red Cross Western Highlands and who have now processed more finished products because of the advantage they have in the vastness of land and plants.
Fr. Sakite is the coordinator of Gutpela Sindaun project in Chimbu and the founder of St Arnold Jensen Community Development Centre at St Arnold Jensen Parish in Mingende.
“What’s wrong with you people? You are not like Ghana. You are very rich. Why are you living hungry and have no money. Why are you sick? “You have everything here. You need not become poor or go hungry.
You should be well fed and live healthy and longer. You should have enough money for your family. That is my dream for all families,” Fr. Sakite said.
The priest was given K6.5 million by the PNG Incentive Fund for his community work in local food processing in 2016.
Timbi and Koi and their women members have thanked Fr. Sakite and the Red Cross Western Highlands team for training them with the vital skills training in organic food processing. he women said they have not found a name for their group or a brand name for their products as they are just one month old and yet to improve on many things.
“We will start with our Palimb 1 and Palimb 2 local level government council wards and eventually roll out to other women in Hagen Central, and the other districts in Western Highlands and Highlands region.
“I think this is the way forward for the country. We’ve got Vision 2050 and other development goals but that would not be achievable if human development is not taken seriously.
“Government and leaders must work with the people at the grassroots level – the bottom up approach; to engage people to specialise in downstream processing and other community oriented and empowerment projects for the small to medium enterprise (SME) policy to come to fruition,” the coordinators said.
The group was blessed with a donation of K1000 from David Yak, president of the PNG National Party to use as seed capital.
Yak said the party is a grassroots party that works with people at the village level to address their needs before looking at bigger plans and visions.
He urged leaders to come down to the grassroots level because this was where the real Papua New Guineans were living.
“The 2018 Apec Leaders’ Summit that we are anticipating and the other major international events that were held in Port Moresby and the huge development that is taking place in our big cities are not the real glimpse of our country.
“The real image or reflection of the country is the struggles an average Papua New Guinea family go through every day in the village to make ends meet. That is where leaders must come down to before beating their chest,” Yak said.
He added that the majority of Papua New Guineans are still living below the poverty line, which means they earn less than K15 a day or have no K15 at all – regarded as very poor.
The problem that the women project tries to address are cross-cutting issues like gender issues, poverty, HIV Aids, drugs, violence against women, lack of economic opportunities, unemployment, natural disasters and food security.