Cook Is. seek cash crop self-sufficiency

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 5

Cook Is. seek cash crop self-sufficiency

By

COLLEEN FOLEY

PA Wellington With New Zealand budgetary aid to the Cook Islands topped off at $9.5 million as a forerunner to phasing it out altogether, the country is casting around for sources of overseas income. Mauke, a small island in the Cook Islands’ southern group is at the forefront of the country’s drive for self sufficiency. “I look forward to the day when I can go into the Foreign Affairs Office in Wellington and say thank you for your help, we can stand financially on our own feet now,” said its member of Parliament, Mr Vaine Tairea. He is bubbling with plans for the island — fresh fruit and vegetable exports, damming a vallry to water the crops, goat farming, chilli sauce manufacture, honey production and traditional crafts. In what could be a marketing coup, Mr Tairea hopes to grow maine, a Hawaiian plant used in traditional dancing costumes, and export it to that country. His ideas also spill over to neighbouring islands. Mitiaro, an island which until recently had a virtually cashless economy, could export smoked eel, now fetching $2B a kilogram, he says. All they need is a $6OOO smokehouse.

Last year Mauke, home

for 685 people, had a total gross income of $86,000. This year it is likely to be close to $250,000, or up 190 per cent.

But Mr Tairea’s plans outstrip the speed at which they can be fulfilled.

Two things hinder the speed of development. One, which cannot be hurried, is the rate at which the islanders adapt to a market-oriented lifestyle.

Mauke islanders still live much the same life as their parents, and their parents before them. Mr Tairea wants the island’s development to remain relatively small-scale, so it ties in with the people’s way of life.

When the Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Wilde, visited the island recently she was carried into the village on a flower-decked litter to be met with the traditional challenge from a spear-carrying orator.

Most of the islanders turned out for the occasion of the Minister’s official welcome, to watch children perform the dances of their ancestors in the falling dusk, exhorted to greater efforts by cries from the orator.

The several feasts held in Ms Wilde’s honour featured traditional subsistence foods — fish, taro, mango and the all-pur-pose coconut. To create the incentive for the islanders to begin producing exports, Mr

Tairea started in 1984 with a crop they already had, the mango. z “Once they saw what money they could make from a product they had always taken for granted, getting them to grow others was quite easy,” he said.

But in the beginning Mr Tairea had to adopt a very “hands on” approach to helping his constituents. The former Wellington smallgoods factory manager, who has a degree in horticulture and a diploma in journalism, bought the seeds himself and worked alongside the Islanders to cultivate the land and plant the first crops.

In 1985 the island began exporting capsicums, chillies, apples and chestnuts to the New Zealand dealers, Turners and Growers, and to the Auckland fresh produce market.

Later, light, high value, produce such as snow peas, sugar snap peas and beans were introduced. The other hindrance is a lack of the basic infrastructure which New Zealand exporters take for granted. Rarotonga, the seat of Government in the Cooks, and the island most visitors go to when holidaying in the islands, is by far the most developed.

To grow crops for export in Mauke, first a road must be built to open up new areas of land for

planting. Then a water supply must be arranged and a system set up. to get the goods for market. That is where the help from New Zealand and other countries comes in.

With $15,000 in development aid from New Zealand, in 1985 the people of Mauke set out to build an airstrip big enough to allow cargo planes to land. Using chainsaws, axes and bushknives all the adults on the island pitched in to clear bush and scrub for a strip 1980 metres long and 60 metres wide, in five working days. In April, 1986, the heavy machinery for shifting trees arrived and by August, 1986, the strip was ready for the visit of the then associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Frank O’Flynn. “The people did all the work themselves once they got the machinery, with help from the Cook Islands and Mauke Ministry of Works,” Mr Tairea said.

Now commercial cargo flights land at the crushed coral topped airstrip at least five times a week.

A land-use capability study sponsored by New Zealand, this year with a budget of about $60,000 has helped Mauke and other islands work out the crops best suited for the many different soil types on each island.

New Zealand also provided $20,000 for a mango

orchard on Mauke and is supplying a diesel generator for the island’s power.

When the New Zealand Army engineers visit the island on defence exercises, they carry out work such as bridge-building and reef-blasting. Mauke has had strong support from the former New Zealand High Commissioner to the Cook Islands, Dr Lance Beath, who is enthusiastic about the islands’ progress so far and future possibilities.

On his most recent visit to the island, with Ms Wilde’s official party, the people of Mauke gave Dr Beath a new name — Temaru-Enua Avaikinui (the protector of the island) — in appreciation for his help.

The Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Dr Pupuke Robati, has plans for the whole country. A proposed black pearl farming project in the northern group, in partnership with French Polynesia, is one scheme which could bring millions of dollars to the country, he said.

There are also schemes to grow seaweed, sundried coffee and vanilla to complement the islands’ traditional exports of copra and bananas.

“It’s our aim to be financially self-support-ing,” he said. “We don’t expect New Zealand and other countries to keep supporting us.”