Study shows cocoa can be grown in Hela, SHP

A RECENT graduate of the University of Technology in Lae says cocoa can be grown in Hela and Southern Highlands to bump up the country’s annual production and export revenue flows from the crop.
Wesley Jacob Wambi, from Ialibu in Southern Highlands is a geologist who has worked in the mining industry for seven years and returned to Unitech to do a Masters of Science in Satellite Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems and graduated last month.
His thesis toward that award was based on the suitability of cocoa as a cash crop in Hela and Southern Highlands, better known for the multi-billion kina oil and gas industries.
Introduction
Cocoa is the second major cash crop in PNG after coffee. Lister 12th among cocoa producing nations of the world, PNG has been in the loop by contributing 41,000 tonnes of cococoa per annum, according to statistics released last September.
However, production has dropped significantly due to the outbreak of the cocoa pod borer disease in 2015.
Cocoa production in PNG is also restricted in coastal, warm areas in New Guinea Islands, Momase and some parts of Papuan regions. This has restricted the country’s capacity to produce more. With changing climate conditions and also the increased technology of genetics and hybrid cocoa seedlings, there is a possibility of cocoa to be grown up in the highlands region of PNG.
Karimui of Chimbu province is the first highlands province that has successfully cultivated cocoa through the technical support from Cocoa Coconut Research Institute of PNG. Producing quality cocoa with 35-70 cocoa pods per tree at an altitude of 1,500 m above sea level is a first which is welcome news for other highlands provinces.
For this study, soil science and suitability analysis was carried out to delineate potential, if any, for cocoa cultivation in Hela and SHP. The study involved the use of GIS and geo-spatial multi-criteria decision making approach.
Parameters of the study
A total of nine geographic parameters were fed as input into the GIS environment. These include temperature, rainfall, soil texture, ph, nitrogen, phosphorus and slope. Specific analyses involved were map manipulation and overlay, surface analysis, spatial interpolation, data management and data conversion. Each respective spatial technique was carried out through data input, processing and finally to produce output results.
The result of the analysis revealed that 25 per cent (6273 square km) and 30 per cent (744 square km) are very highly and highly suitable respectively while 31 per cent (7864 square km) of the study area is moderately suitable for cocoa cultivation.
In places where cocoa has never been grown before, the only way to prove the suitability of the soil is to plant trials as an experiment at start. This study therefore highly recommended that the concern government authorities in the provinces should start planting trial hybrid cocoa clones at small scale in some of those areas that are highly suitability to plant cocoa.
A further prospect scale study is still open to those areas that will first implement and cultivate cocoa. This study will zoom into detail on actual availability of the land, land accessibility, and social and economic constrains.
Soil suitability
Soil suitability analysis is a scientific approach that provides information on constraints and opportunities for land use that aid in proper decision-making for optimal use of land resources.
This analytical approach involves processing of soil data including scientific, topographic, physical and chemical properties of soil, climate and land accessibility.
These assist farmers, agricultural scientists and other land administrators to fully utilise the land resources for potential cash crop cultivation.
Situated near the tropics, PNG has been known for cocoa cultivation and production which contributed enormously towards the country’s GDP. Its contribution to the world market has been well regarded and was rated 12th among leading cocoa producing countries (web document, 2018).
Cocoa is a well-adapted agro-forestry plantation crop grown in hot, rainy climates with cultivation concentrated in the band between 0 to 20 degree north and south of the equator. This band is sometimes called the cocoa belt (Herman, 1989).
In PNG, cocoa is the second most important agriculture cash crop delivering an income of US$96.3 million (K318 million) in 2015. Some 60 per cent of its income goes directly to the growers, 90 per cent of whom are smallholder farmers. Around 14 per cent of the population (more than 1 million people) rely on cocoa production and exports for most of their livelihood.
The Cocoa Industry Strategic Plan for 2016-2025 underlines that investments in cocoa will benefit the majority of the population in PNG and contribute positively to the nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Although there are few plantations of different cash crops from medium to large scale, agriculture contribution towards the country’s GDP is much below its potential at present (Samanta et al. 2011). Unlike any other agriculture systems adopted by other highlands provinces, SHP and Hela have yet to develop strong cash cropping components.
Although it is mainly known as the principal ingredient for chocolate, there are other products derived from cacao beans; cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, cocoa cake and cocoa powder (Hermann et al. 2002).
Origin and distribution
The genus Theobroma originated in the Amazon and Orinoca basins and subsequently spread to Central America, particularly Mexico. Whitlock et al (2001) suggested that the region extending from the forests of Amazon to the Orinoco and Tabasco in South Maxico to be the centre of the origin of cocoa. Schulter (1984) predicts that cacao dispersed along two roots, one leading north and the other to the west. Later, Cortés, a Spaniard, carried cocoa to Spain in 1520s and used it as a beverage as well as a crop for cultivation. It was the Spaniards who also introduced the crop into Equatorial Guinea in the 17th century.
In PNG, cocoa was introduced by German settlers around 1900. Smallholder blocks were established on the Gazelle Peninsulla in East New Britain, around Lae in Morobe and Popondetta in Northern.
Smallholder production was concentrated in ENB and Bougainville and these two provinces have continued to dominant the smallholder sector (Ben, 2015). Of the 22 provinces, 14 have planted cocoa at various levels from smallholders to plantations scale.
Scope of research
The present study was based on spatial multi-criteria decision-making approach for suitability analysis. The study is limited to Southern Highland and Hela.
In this study, the geographical data were combined and transformed into decision. Topographic analysis was done by extracting DEM of the study area from the 90m resolution DEM map of PNG.
Soil database was prepared to analyse chemical and physical properties of the soil from the soil information extracted from the PNGRIS.
The two climatic condition; temperature and rainfall data were also prepared from the PNGRIS database. A land use/land cover map for the study area was also prepared using supervised classification in ERDAS Imagine version 8.5.
Like any other studies, there are certain limitations. In this study, the time, resources, and cost were the limiting factors that were taken into account. It is very costly to travel all throughout Hela and SHP to collect soil samples. Laboratory preparation and analysis is also very expensive. Thus the multi-criteria decision making approach and GIS were combined to analysis available soil data and other required dataset.
Final cocoa suitability map
The final weighted suitability map was created using the raster calculator from the spatial analyst tool.
The map was then reclassified into five different suitability levels to zoom into the area of interest. The classes were classified as very highly suitable, highly, moderate, low, and very low or not suitable.
The results obtained show that 6,273 square km land is very highly suitable for cocoa cultivation covering 25 per cent of the project area. The second class has 7447 square km of land been highly suitable for cocoa cultivation and covers 30 per cent of land area.
This has few limitations to fully consider for being highly suitable. Those places that have been classified as moderate, low or very low have some limitations where the required conditions for cocoa to grow well are lacking.
Conclusion and recommendations
From the results, it is concluded that one quarter of Hela and SHP land is very highly suitable for cocoa cultivation and production. It is now the responsibility of the concerned authorities, district and provincial agriculture boards to make a bold decision to test those places that have high potential.
Cocoa has never been grown before in Hela and SHP so to test out those very high suitability areas, little can be done until results of trial plantings are available.
Thus it is recommended that those concerned should start planting trial cocoa seedlings as an experiment in those highly suitable areas.
This will open doors for a new study that can zoom in on the areas of interest.
District or provincial administrations can conduct detailed studies in terms of actual land available for trial plantings and also the social and economic aspects of any such project as well as constraints and opportunities presented.