Rubber bounces back in Angoram

AGRICULTURE

By CYRIL GARE
ANGORAM people in East Sepik are a strong, resilient and industrious lot despite lack of leadership, denial of needy government services and daily experiences of making-do with decrepit infrastructure facilities.
While isolation is a characteristic, poverty is not an excuse.
Their road connecting the district to the provincial headquarters in Wewak needs urgent repair and maintenance; there are no electricity and town water supplies and sanitation services, banking and general municipal utilities. Their district hospital is undergoing some refurbishment at the time of our visit but still needs a major boost in outlook and health services.
Public servants including district police need integration, coordination and importantly leadership, while strategic agricultural facilities like the Saramandi Research Station and the Gavien rubber processing factory remain a ‘skeleton’ memory of a once functional State’s research and extension asset and rubber exporting production hub.
In the development parlance, it is a ‘bad public policy’ choice to have invested K4 billion or one third of the national budget in a two day APEC leadership summit at a ‘service centre’ like Port Moresby in 2018 at great cost to continuous neglect of ‘production centres’ like the third-tier Angoram district. Imagine the change in Physical Quality of Life (PQL) if an equivalent amount of investment was made directly in rural people’s standard of living in a given fiscal time? Unless radical approach intervenes, ‘production centres’ like Angoram where land (resources) plus labour (people) which are prerequisite denominators to lasting development lie, PNG will continue to reel from the amphetamines of bad omen 46 years on. ‘Take Back PNG’ could remain only a wish-for-millennium political mantra of our time which our children will curse us for our inaction today.
Of all, Angoram district is a ‘sleeping lion’ and if waken in time with the right energy, could take-off with mass potential in agricultural production of cash crops such as cocoa (currently it is a leading cocoa production district in the country), vanilla, rubber, and coffee while food crops such as rice (thanks to outstanding leadership of young champions like Kristofa Wesley Piso) is slowly getting onto supermarket shelves selling as the ‘Sepik Organic Rice – Angoram’ brand.
Angoram needs to apply brakes on uncontrolled logging and alluvial mining rush especially at Tamo in Keram LLG.
In spite of the threat of tailings disposal from the proposed Frieda mine upstream, the God-graced mighty Sepik river provides a promising future with exotic aquatic prawns, tilapia, moon fish, cat fish, and other fishery species as well as crocodile meat, skin and other crocodile by products which have great untapped potential for commercialisation and export.
The infinite clay along the river banks provide huge potential for a clay-brick industry un-thought off while tons and tons of dust-in-the-brown-water holds organic sediments fit for fertilising Australian and New Zealand farms and tens of others in the Arabian deserts for ages.
The Ajirab unique sounds and harmonies of its bamboo flutes and the Tambunum spirit haus, carvings and totems in hand crafts, bilums and baskets resemble only a tip of Angoram’s vast potential for culture and tourism development.
Despite the odds, Angoram will remain an epic in common-wealth history because of the gift of late Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare born April 9, 1926 died February 26, 2021, aged 85. He served 49 years of distinguished service in politics – great contribution of Angoram and East Sepik people in national development. The Grand Chief reigned from Karau village in the Marienberg LLG of Angoram district. The greater Sepik as well as Papua New Guinea joins the people of Angoram in celebrating the life of this great patriot whom unto him God unravelled the treasures of a nation to become.
Connect PNG is a ‘national duty’. It is far more than just connecting with roads, bridges, jetties, airports, and airstrips and letting them to rot in isolation and neglect. Regular coordinated visits and extension programs between ‘service centres’ and ‘production centres’ serve both ends of the sword; it reinvigorates public servants’ morale and order and at the same time serves the purposes of ‘monitoring and evaluation’ which is by far PNG’s greatest killer in development planning and implementation endeavours.
In the renewable sector, agriculture realises it has the potential to drive that needed change as the ‘piston’ of that long term broad-based sustainable economy. For example, in nine years between 2009 and 2018, the sector generated K20 billion for the national coffers. However, it reciprocates minimum in return; only K1.147 billion was given back to the sector, which is less than one per cent of GDP.
In real kina terms, this is about K95 million which, when divided by the 10 commodity boards in the agriculture sector, that’s about K9.5 million every year, inadequate to drive effective agricultural programs.
Each sector therefore, needs to come up with appropriate strategies to move their respective sectors forward by identifying avenues which will and can continue to contribute to moving the sector forward.
From Dec 12 to 14, the Rubber Board of PNG under the leadership of second–term chairperson, Josephine Kenni connected Waigani with rural Angoram. She led a technical team comprising officers from the Department of National Planning and Monitoring (DNPM) and Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) there for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). It follows a K40,000 funding for a new rubber nursery at Gavien and the cup lump buying under the Government’s price support program.
“We’ve seen reports and Gavien is one of them. We are impressed with the reports and now we are here to see the actual thing and we are more than impressed.
“We are feeling the pains of the farmers, and yourself (Ms. Kenni) and the (rubber) industry. We can not do much but we will help push the papers that’s what we do at Planning to try and secure funding.
“But from the funding we’ve given the industry our role is to go on monitoring whether you’ve done the job you have planned to do or not. That’s the reason we accompany the Chairlady here today,” said delegation’s team leader, Mrs. Jenny Bire Tumun, Assistant Secretary at economic division – renewable branch of DNPM when addressing rubber farmers at Gavien on Monday – Dec 13.
The team was particularly impressed with the work of the young Angoram-based PNG rubber industry officer, Florian Pai. Within six months he was able to establish a fully-fledged clone nursery holding block with 14,000 root stocks in and ready for budding.
An additional three hectares have been ploughed and ready for rehabilitation next year. He even constructed a bush material field office with the help of local farmers.
Florian was rewarded with a brand new motorbike by the PNG Rubber Board to support his logistics.
“We are impressed with the K40,000 you were given. You’ve done so much, we can see the energy in you. We believe in young leaders and you are a leader in this industry.
“If we are to revive the (stagnant rubber) industry young leaders like you will take it to the next level. You have become a role model to the young ones around you. We are impressed with what you’ve done, keep that momentum going.
“Program of rubber needs to be embedded in the district program to make bigger impact,” Tumun added.
DNPM’s first assistant secretary, Social Sector division, Mrs. Rose Koyama described the efforts in reviving rubber in Angoram as “brilliant leadership. You guys have gone beyond what we expected.”
Koyama explained that as public servants “we are pushing papers and provide advice and recommendations only”, however, she added that its “not only Government but there are other opportunities out there including the private sector or even individuals to assist”.
A rubber farmer in PNG could earn as much as K170,000 per year from cup lump sales alone, according to the PNG Rubber Board Chairlady, Josephine Kenni.
She said rubber trees produce around 279 kilograms of latex per year so if a farmer owns 500 rubber trees and selling his cup lumps at K1.20 per kg, s/he could earn as much as K167,400 per year and that’s a lot of money for a simple villager.
Gavien rubber project was established in the late 1970s under an ADB funding. Under its resettlement scheme farmers apply and were allocated with 2-3 hectare blocks to plant rubber which they sell cup lumps to the processing factory.
It was around 1997 that the factory closed, interest dropped and farmers resorted to cocoa and other cash crops.

• Cyril Gare is a freelance journalist