2 December 2013

Improving food security for cocoa and oil palm growers

Australia and Papua New Guinea have signed off on a new project addressing rising food insecurity amongst smallholder cocoa and oil palm farmers in PNG.

The four year research project is a partnership between the Cocoa Coconut Institute, Oil Palm Research Association, Curtin University and James Cook University.

Funded with AU1.2 million from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the project will work with oil palm communities in Northern and West New Britain provinces, and cocoa communities in East New Britain Province, Milne Bay and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

Falling incomes and declining access to land for food gardening from population pressure are growing issues for oil palm growers. Smallholder cocoa growers face the devastating cocoa pod borer, which has significantly reduced people’s capacity to purchase food.

The project will aim to gain a detailed socio-economic and cultural understanding of the farming and livelihood systems of smallholders.

Based on this information, suitable interventions will be developed and evaluated to relieve the stresses on farming systems and improve smallholder food and income security.

Strategies will include income diversification to enable people to purchase food and strategies to improve access to land for food gardening such as rotational replanting of cocoa and wider avenue spacing of oil palm to enable intercropping with food crops.

Intercropping of cocoa and oil palm with food crops will contribute directly to food security through higher production.

Incomes and income security will be enhanced through income diversification and gardening on land over which people hold secure tenure.

Environmental benefits will be achieved by alleviating the need to garden in environmentally sensitive lands. Improved extension using new technologies to assist cocoa growers switch from a foraging to farming production strategy should lead to significant increases in income. Some farmers who have made the transition are achieving yields more than double what they did before the cocoa pod borer hit PNG.