Rice can make major socio-economic impact in PNG

WHILE our rice industry is still a fledgling one, this sector has the potential to have a similar socio-economic impact in the future as the more established, celebrated crops within the PNG agricultural industry.
Not only can the rice industry realise huge growth independently; it can complement existing popular crops and ease some of the burden on communities in the process. I will explain shortly.
Demand would be the most important marker to note. For a very long time, rice has been a staple food item on our dinner tables. It has always been viewed as an important crop and much talked about, its status debated by people from all walks of life. It is quite safe to state that rice is one food item that seems always to be top-of-mind around the nation and a very important part of our daily diet.
Benefits to the consumer is another indicator. Experts have it that one kilogram of rice provides almost three times the calories of a kilogram of sweet potato. Rice is available, easily accessible and for the working class, convenient to prepare for a meal.
Whilst we tend to overlook the convenience benefits of rice, in the kitchen it is undeniable that mothers will easily reach for a packet in their cupboards and in no time prepare a meal for the family. Perhaps the final test I would note would be preference, when I see children at the dinner table push aside the kaukaus and other local vegetables and dig straight into rice first, then decide whether to have the rest of the meal.
You could mount a strong argument that rice is truly PNG’s favourite and most preferred food in PNG homes.
Apart from popularity and nutritional benefits, rice has immense potential to offer socio-economic benefits to communities across PNG in terms of cash income, social status and livelihoods.
It can mitigate the short-term cash needs and issues of communities associated with growing the most established commodities such as oil palm, coffee, cocoa and vanilla.
This is possible due to the diverse agriculture practises that our communities are engaged in across PNG. We have had the privilege to focus much of our current efforts into promoting rice as a viable crop amongst some of most active farming communities in this country, with noted farmers, families and communities engaged in either coffee, cocoa or oil palm.
The most notable is farming communities entrenched in oil palm production across PNG. Oil palm engages over 150,000 active growers with extended families who live off the industry in one way or another.
The downside of maintaining a one-crop focus, however, is the social stress exerted upon extended families living on just a unit of land, which is well documented by researchers. Over the years a number of strategies have been suggested to ease this pressure, and rice is one strong solution.
Rice stands to mitigate short term cash needs within these communities, especially during a re-planting cycle. It can also provide a direct food resource.
At Trukai we also observed that through growing rice here, soils can be improved and pest cycles disrupted, with residual nutrients supplied.
In a contrasting situation, large tracts of unproductive grasslands in the Markham valley which lay idle for thousands of years except for long fallow subsistence farming and ad-hoc farming are now being converted into highly productive economic powerhouses for simple village communities who have never seen, touched or felt the scale of development that is sweeping across their communities.
The socio-economic impacts of rice farming are so immense that it is everyone’s business to ensure that we all make a positive effort towards realising these benefits.

• Humphrey Saese is Rice Development Manager for Papua New Guinea’s leading rice supplier, Trukai Industries. Humphrey welcomes reader feedback or new story suggestions at [email protected]