Oil palm extension services pick up again

By PETER ESILA
AGRICULTURE extension service is a vital element of public service but has been lost over the years.
Ironically, the Government has placed agriculture as one of its top priorities.
“Go back to the land” has been the catch cry of current Prime Minister James Marape, which in fact is only an echo of the same message from his predecessors.
The Government has put money where its mouth is; at least the K50 million has been allocated to its agriculture price support and intervention programme last year.
Different commodity boards got their own pieces of the cake.
One is this boards or institutions is the Oil Palm Industry Corporation (Opic) who received K2 million out of the K50 million.
Opic’s project areas in Papua New Guinea include Milne Bay, Northern, New Ireland and West New Britain.
This time around, we look into Opic’s Alotau project in Milne Bay.
On Saturday, Oct 2, Opic general secretary Kepson Pupita visited Alotau to present a motorbike to Opic staff to help them provide that important didiman wok.
He also visited abandoned houses left to deteriorate over the years.
“Today is Saturday, Oct2, 2021 and we are still at work. We are here at Opic office in Milne Bay, Gurney is where the office is.”
Milne Bay has a total of 843 smallholder oil palm farmers.
Pupita says 1,522 hectares of oil palm is planted here, and it is one of the smallest in the country out of Opic’s five projects.
“There was funding from the Government through budgetary appropriation since 2018 for road maintenance and then rehabilitation of the smallholder access road for crop recovery and pick-up and delivery to the mills. Out of that in 2018, we have done four roads in here and then in 2019 we have done two roads. That (money) came directly through the public investment programme funding under the economic recovery programme for the country. On top of that in 2020, we were given K2 million,” Pupita says.
“We have spent around K400,000 of that money in Milne Bay project areas, we have done block rehabilitation, and paid contractors that have rehabilitated the blocks.
“The bikes are very important tools for extension services, others would prefer Land Cruisers for but for me and Opic, I prefer motorbikes because they are cheap to operate, and one can get you to everywhere in the blocks to access the blocks and also to access the farmers. Extension officers are there to help our local farmers to produce and to produce to the expected standards. We have best management practices in all commodity boards and in oil palm we have best management practices in terms of block harvesting, pruning, drainage, fertiliser application, we have to produce responsible.
“So in order for that to be practised by our farmers regularly, we need to have trained agriculturist who are the extension officers to get out there, and to get out there, there has got to be a medium where our extension officers have to be assisted to get there.
“There should not be any reason why my extension officers are not going to the fields. Also we have done a lot of rehabilitation and we have done the access roads, we are down with staff, we will rehabilitate two run-down houses up in Sagarai area.
“In Milne Bay, we have two major divisions, Gurney with almost 800 hectares of planted palm oil and Sagarai area around about 700 hectares, so those make up the 1,500 hectares,”
“At the moment there is no physical presence of the extension service officers out there in the Sagarai area. They were left many years ago, so I got to rehabilitate those housesbecause I have spent a lot of money in building roads and rehabilitating blocks. We spent almost around K3 million and I want to get the crop and increase production so that we bring in the most needed forex into this country, and also put some money into our local people so that there standard of living is increased or we alleviate poverty to some extent,” he says.
Opic also made payments to about 26 farmers who were contracted to clean their blocks under Opic’s programme to encourage people to clean their blocks and increase production.
“In 2019, in the Alotau project, we did 687,117 metric tonnes of fresh fruit bunch (FFB); in 2020, the time we started doing some intervention activities with the support of the Government for the first time, our production went up to 733,724 metric tonnes of FFB. That is a small increase of 7 per cent, the 7 per cent consists of 46,607 metrics tonnes of FFB, but that little increase in terms of kina, we brought in K65 million to the farmer. That is the gross earnings that was paid to the farmers,” Pupita says.
There are 843 smallholder farmers in the Alotau project that covers 1,522 hectares of planted oil palm.
“So with the ncrease from 2019 to 2020, respectively we paid almost K52 million to the milling company to produce our crop, the increase is substantial,” Pupita says.
“I continue to tell my farmers that this increase in 60 per cent of world price will continue to spiral up thanks to Coronavirus (Covid-19), as we know in the local communities people continue to work, because they are already isolated, the families live on their own, and that is the advantage of agriculture, and we will have to continue to promote agriculture,
“This is an opportune time to continue to work the land, and make sure that we increase production, I will continue to ask government to support Opic because from the figures, we can very quickly turn around and bring the monies that is required, we are talking about farmers, they are our people, so this forex (foreign exchange) that is coming into the country, goes directly to the villages and communities and 10 per cent of what we make goes directly to tax as Goods and Services Tax,”
“The money comes in, it goes straight back into the economy, and we need to continue to promote that,” he says.
On the same day Opic also made payments to about 26 farmers who were contracted to clean blocks under Opic’s rehabilitation programme to encourage people to clean their blocks and increase production.
The results, Pupita said is bearing more fruits.
Milne Bay Grower’s Association chairman Stuart Tatauro says the oil palm smallholders started in Alotau in 1986.
“The blocks have deteriorated at Sagarai, one reason being the absence of extension officers on the field,”
“With the new management of Opic, as the chairman of the growers association, I am now well pleased that this has come about, because this has been the cry of the farmers here to have extension services given to them at their doorsteps,”
“Once we have these houses maintained, we will have officers stationed here because they can go out and provide extension services from upkeep to harvest, production and everything to monitor vehicles going in and out, so we can also increase the production. With the rehabilitation programme shows Opic’s input and attention back into what was neglected.
“My encouragement to the growers is to continue working on the blocks because we have a lot of changes that is taken place.”
He encourages youths to work their blocks because there is money in it.
“We are very happy that we have got youths heavily involved in the rehabilitation because youths have become a problem and an issue within our blocks, we now have a blocks that have two to three children and they are fighting over blocks.”
“Engaging the youths in the block rehabilitation programme helps a lot to at least put some income into their pockets.
“The arrival of new motorcycles is a boost in the system. We have two vehicles, one is about 14 years old and the other is seven years old. We continue to have problems with the vehicles butnow that we have the motorcycles, we believe we can move extension far and wide within the project,” Tatauro says.