Summer shelter transforms vegetable production

A little shelter in summer goes a long way to improving crop production and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the Pacific region.

While many other countries around the world use protected cropping to keep their plants warm, in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, structures such as walk-through tunnels, shade houses and plastic housing keep damaging summer rains off delicate vegetables and offer some sun protection too.

As part of an ACIAR-supported horticultural project, farmers in these 3 countries have been trialling a stepped approach to protected cropping. They begin with relatively simple structures, made from readily available materials such as bamboo, plastic, timber, shade cloth and even galvanised iron.

With a shelter in place, farmers plant vegetables in the summer off-season, from November to April, such as tomatoes, lettuce, capsicums and cucumbers. This allows them to tap into premium markets for their vegetables at a time of year when many Pacific countries rely on vegetable imports.

The recently completed 5-year ACIAR-supported project worked directly with about 40 smallholder farmers helping to test this new way of farming while developing new skills and knowledge. Hundreds more people have been exposed to the project through local farmer and village networks.

Professor Phil Brown, an agricultural scientist at the Central Queensland University, Australia, has led this research for ACIAR, in collaboration with Mr David Hickes from the Pacific Community (SPC).

Professor Brown said there is often an emphasis on the infrastructure in protected cropping, but it is only one of 4 crucial ‘legs’ in successful systems. The others are agronomy, pest and disease control, and marketing. Without the other 3, protected cropping often does not deliver the results it is capable of, he said, and famers abandon their efforts.

‘So, we developed an analogy with the kava bowl, which is culturally significant in the region; each of the four components is like a leg on a kava bowl, and all are necessary for the success of a protected cropping system.’

The project team has provided training for farmers, reinforcing the need for all 4 legs in ways that they can relate to. The kava bowl analogy also provides the basis of a training program developed for the ministries and departments of agriculture in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

Several of the vegetable varieties that farmers are growing have been selected specifically for their suitability in growing in protected conditions, rather than in the field. Some variety recommendations have come from research in northern Australia undertaken by Dr Elio Jovicich, from the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, as part of this project. New species included a Lebanese cucumber, which proved particularly popular when introduced in Samoa.