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Planning for agricultural development and sustainable land management in Papua New Guinea
Project ID
ASEM/1996/044
Project Country
Commissioned Organisation
Australian National University, Australia
Project Leader
Dr Bryant J Allen
bryant.allen@anu.edu.au
Phone:
02 6125 4347
Fax:
02 6125 4896
Project Budget
$908,013.00
Start Date
01/07/1997
Finish Date
31/12/1998
Extension Start Date
31/12/1998
Extension Finish Date
31/12/2000
ACIAR Research Program Manager
Dr Ken Menz
Related publications
Overview Objectives
The main aim of the project was to collect information on natural resources and farming systems (especially smallholder agriculture) in PNG, with the ultimate objective of addressing problems of land degradation and underdevelopment.
An important additional aim was to strengthen the ability of the PNG National Agricultural Research Institution (NARI) to develop strategies in the future for the planned intensification of its agriculture without associated land degradation.
Project Background and Objectives
The actions of smallholder farmers will be critical in ensuring the economic and environmental wellbeing of Papua New Guinea (PNG), a country whose population of has doubled in the last 30 years and continues to increase rapidly. More than three-quarters of the population (about 3 million people) are smallholder semi-subsistence farmers, and more than 60 per cent of these people live in hilly areas. They produce most of their own food, mainly using shifting cultivation systems, as well as growing significant amounts of domestically-marketed fresh vegetables.
Smallholders have the potential to stimulate local development through their demand for, and supply of, goods and services with a high local content. Their savings and investments will also be important in national economic growth. As the non-agricultural economy cannot provide full employment to more than about 15 per cent of the working-age population, agriculture is the only sector with the potential to increase employment to keep up with population growth.
The challenge is to manage the intensification and growth of agriculture in the smallholder sector by increasing diversity and using local resources to best effect. To do this, high quality information about the ecological bases of PNG farming, and about the farming systems and farmers themselves, is needed. As well as a lack of knowledge, there was also a lack of any practical method to acquire such knowledge regularly. This exercise was well overdue because the last attempt at the national level to collect systematic information about farming systems was in 1962.
An earlier ACIAR project, ANRE 196/044, commenced the task of collecting this information. A review recommended that its work be extended, and this project was the result.
Project Outcomes
The research team combined a large amount of previously collected data into a mappable farming systems database, providing a powerful tool for developing and implementing national and provincial planning. The team also developed a nation-wide agricultural research strategy for the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI).
The two full-time PNG researchers in the project received intensive hands-on training in the use of geographic information systems (GIS), ArcView, MASP and PNGRIS databases, and in how to interrogate the systems to address key research and management issues. Both of these researchers now train other staff at both provincial and national levels, and also run courses at UNITECH in Lae. NARI subsequently employed them.
It is clear that these two have achieved a high facility in manipulating and integrating the database (and in producing meaningful and intelligible GIS based output). However the impact goes beyond this, as they now process and meet hundreds of requests for output annually from the private sector, government and NGOs.
The user-friendly mappable farming systems database created by the project can define database farming systems by their agricultural practices and crops and also by demographic, socioeconomic and accessibility factors. Farming systems can now be defined by a vulnerability index and by combinations of vulnerability, estimated income, accessibility and demographic measures.
The database is a powerful tool for national and sub-national planning and for the development of a national agricultural research strategy for NARI. Using the new technologies and techniques, NARI researchers are focusing on how farmers can best use their resources while ensuring sustainable land management and agricultural production. The facilitation of sub-national planning is also important, since devolution in PNG government has put pressure on local authorities to undertake district-level planning.
Location
There are no project locations defined for this project.
