Cocoa can sustain Bougainville

MACKIWI plantation in Tinputz on Bougainville sits on 100 hectares of rich volcanic land watered by tropical rains all year round. Little wonder then that anything tropical pushed into the soil flourishes and yields bountifully.
Here an ambitious cocoa pro¬gramme is being trialed and will soon be introduced to other parts of the island when the Autono¬mous Bougainville Government provides the required financial backing.
The man behind the Bou¬gainville Cocoa Development Programme, James Rutana is con¬vinced that its successful applica¬tion and the resultant yields and exports can sustain the economy of an independent Bougainville for its 200,00 people.
James is an economics graduate from the University of London in Great Britain and is particular about “his calling” as a micro-economist – one who is directly involved with assisting people at the household level.
He has vast knowledge and experience in the cocoa industry as a graduate economist working with the Cocoa Board of Jamaica and later on in establishing and running the PNG Cocoa Board as founding chairman for over a decade.
Rutana had purchased the Mack¬iwi plantation from an expatriate and when the hostilities broke out on the island 1989, he fled with his family to the Solomon Islands. He returned to a plantation that was run down and there was noth¬ing left which he could turn into cash quickly so he had to start from scratch again, clearing and replanting.
His determination and his love for the cocoa led to his success with hybrids and clones that took less than two years. But there was more to the success story. Rather than wait 18 months for his plants to start producing, he decided to cultivate upland rice in between the lines of cocoa. From plots of cocoa, the Rutana family has been able to reap four harvests of rice before the cocoa began producing pods.
When work on the plantation required an extra pair of hands, he sent for his eldest son Jamie to leave his air steward job with Air Nauru and return home.
Rutana’s cocoa programme is able to produce three tonnes of cocoa per hectare per year. He has asked the Autonomous Bougain¬ville Government for funding to extend the cocoa programme to at least 70,000 hecatares in the next four years.
He believes that in four years, Bougainville can produce 200,00 tonnes of cocoa to generate K130 million in export earnings. In that same period and on the same amount of land, 560,000 tonnes of rice can be produced, Rutana says.
“For rice I say, if you can’t sell it you can eat it and if you can’t eat it, you can sell it.”
The ABG has approved funding for Rutana’s cocoa programme; agriculture and commerce officers have been to Mackiwi planta¬tion see firsthand what Rutana is talking about and came away impressed. The DPI officers will start with 800 farmers – 300 in South Bougainville, 300 in Cen¬tral and 200 in North. To make the programme manageable, the farmers will be put into clusters of 10 each so they assist one another, Rutana explains.
Communal cooperatives would also help in the programme.
Ultimately, a Bougainville commodities company would be created to take charge of the programme and be responsible for exports of not only cocoa but all other agricultural produce from the land.
Cocoa is an easy crop to manage and responds to human stimuli, Rutana says. “I can make the cocoa tree to bear yields I desire. I have proven true the theory that the tree responds to human input. Here at Mackiwi, I am developing cocoa trees for women who do not need hooks or pruners.”
Rutana recently has also discov¬ered that cocoa skins can actually be burnt and used as a potassium supplement.
Rutana is not to keen on mining which he says will benefit land¬owners only within mining areas and also make them passive re¬cipients of mining benefits rather than putting their hands to work.
His model for fiscal self-reliance is based on an agriculture-based economy and the Bougainville cocoa project should be the core of it.
“Bougainville does not need a monumental capacity building. All it needs to do now is to ex¬pand and strengthen its economic base by developing and adopting more practical implementation of land development and a land management programme. The people of Bougainville are land¬owners, not miners.”
Bougainville has a landmass of almost one million hectares of convertible land. Allowing 40% to cover mountains, valleys, rivers and streams and possible swamp land, it still has 600,000 hectares of agricultural land and therefore can develop their land to secure a political future. Rutana said Malaysia for example, grew from its agricultural sector.
To ensure that all the money generated from commodities, all trading should be restricted to Bougainvilleans, he argues.
“All cocoa and copra trading must now be left in the hands of the people of Bougainville.”
To further realise a degree of fiscal self-reliance the ABG has been called on to facilitate the es¬tablishment of a commercial bank and negotiate with external inves¬tors for joint venture operations in airlines, shipping and telecommu¬nications, he said.
But the biggest assistance the can given its people is to ABG to source and funding up to K500 million, through the national government as instrumental in the Bougainville Agreement, to assist in the development of agriculture-based industries.
The Bougainville cocoa pro¬gramme spearheaded by Rutana is expected to raise for the ABG an estimated K374 million over five years to 2017.
The figure is not abstract but based on current experience avail¬able and as supported by Bou¬gainville farmers, Rutana said.
“The mechanism and applied technology are available on Bougainville. All it needs now is ABG support to secure bridging finance for commercial equity for up to K500 million repayable within five years by cocoa, copra and rice growers. The war is over. It is time for the people to put their heads down and sweat to gain the freedom of ruling their own life…”
Successfull intercropping…Rice growing in between newly planted cocoa seedlings and shade trees.
A cocoa nursery on Rutana’s Mackiwi plantation.