Papua New Guinea export tree crops study

Tree crops - principally coffee and coconut - contribute about 80% of Papua New Guinea's export income. However, production of cocoa and coconuts has declined in the past decade, and the outlook for coffee expansion in uncertain due to the limited availability of suitable land, much of which is required for food crops, and low prices for over-quota production. About 1000 plantations still grow at least on of these crops and continue to provide most of the rural employment plus some employment in urban-based support services. However, smallholder production has now outstripped that of plantations. Some 450,000 households depend on small-scale farming systems that combine subsistence food production with cash crops. Most remain village-based, although increasing numbers occupy contiguous blocks often involving large areas of cash crop.

For policy purposes it will be important to monitor the shift towards smallholder production, and a number of recent reviews and surveys have provided data on such matters as population, land use, subsistence agriculture, nutrition and ecological zones. The resultant data banks and sampling frames are a useful beginning and will facilitate future choice of sampling procedures, questionnaire design and survey implementation procedures aimed at providing regular and reliable physical and economic data on trends in the large-and smallholder/village sectors. Nevertheless, available data on which to base future planning and policies still contain identified gaps. Papua New Guinea urgently needs research into an appropriate survey methods and analytical framework across both the smallholder and plantation sectors to meet its data-base requirements at minimal cost but with satisfactory accuracy.

This project brings together teams of collaborating researchers from the PNG and Queensland Departments of Primary Industry respectively. It seeks to develop and test low-cost survey methods and develop a suitable analytical framework for an agro-economic study of both the largeholder and smallholder village sectors of the Papua New Guinea cocoa, coffee and coconut industries. The surveys are to provide reliable and regular data on: areas planted and rates of new plantings, replantings and retirements; cost and input data needed to evaluate different development modes and price stabilisation options; the extent of adoption of new technology (including planting material, fertilisers, weedicides, pesticides and agronomic practices); and the constraints to production (including availability of marketing, storage and processing facilities). Similarly, the research team will develop and test a suitable survey method and analytical framework for incorporation into future national and area surveys aimed at providing information on variables such as householder income and expenditure, the allocation and land, labour and capital to subsistence food reserves and household nutrition levels.

In the course of this work, the team will identify key industry statistics (and measure their reliability and cost of acquiring them), design an appropriate administrative structure and transitional mechanism (to ensure the maintenance of an effective agro-economic survey program), identify the most efficient locations for tree crop development, provide data applicable to planning commodity price stabilisation, and train Papua New Guinean counterparts to take over survey design, implementation, analysis and data storage. For the smallholder sector, they will also examine the most appropriate scale and organisational structure for furture development.

As selection of suitable survey methods and analytical framework depend on existing industry structure and logistics, the collaborating scientists intend to consider the largeholder and smallholder/village sectors separately. Because the largeholder sub-project is less complex in sample design, data collection and analysis, they will undertake this first, which will also familiarise them with the study area the particular crops and the agronomy. Substantial changes in plantation ownership and the number of non-bearing or senile trees make it critically important to improve the data base for largeholder tree crops.

The smallholder sub-project will provide data on the complex interaction between cash cropping, and subsistence food production, as well as basic economic and physical data. At a later stage a nutrition study may be incorporated.

Much of the initial survey design work will take place in Brisbane, but to ensure close collaboration with PNG colleagues, a seminar is planned to review existing survey and design methodologies. Pilot field testing will follow the development of a satisfactory design, and any redesign implemented and if necessary retested. Each sub-project will then produce a field manual as a basis as a basis for extensive field interviewing.