Table of Contents
As successive strategy and policy papers have emphasized, agriculture is the most important economic sub-sector in Papua New Guinea. We are constantly told that agriculture provides the livelihood for about 85 per cent of the economically active population. The agriculture sector covers the activities of the private and public sector in cropping, animal husbandry, management of land and water resources, and post-harvest areas within the continuum of agriculture systems, from small-scale subsistence to intensive, commercial agri-business activities.
The colonial legacy in agriculture was described in an earlier policy-making workshop at the Australian National University, in 1977 (McKillop 1981). It followed a dual policy of encouraging a commercial plantation sector and providing settlers with the ‘full benefits of modern agricultural scientific knowledge’ on the one hand, and promoting a smallholder peasant proprietorship on the other. Professionals working in the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries (DASF) provided policy and technical support. DASF was a specialist, technically-orientated department modelled on Australian practice. As such, it stood apart from the generalist administration model generally associated with colonial administration of pre-colonial societies. Well-trained professionals with pride in their achievements staffed the department. Through its research work, particularly at the Lowlands Agricultural Experiment Station (LAES) at Keravat, DASF had established an internationally recognized capability in tropical agriculture. The focus was on export tree crops in which Papua New Guinea had a comparative advantage — primarily coffee, cocoa and coconuts — which reinforced a strong commodity orientation within the Department. The establishment of a palm oil industry in West New Britain in the late 1960s also demonstrated a comparative advantage for Papua New Guinea in this crop and the success of the new industry reinforced the orientation toward export tree crops in agriculture policies.
During the transition through self-government to independence, DASF was able to attract a new wave of dedicated professional personnel in a range of fields. New headquarters sections were established in economic research, training, extension research and planning, while research activities were extended from the station into the village agricultural system. A major survey of subsistence agriculture in 1961–62 had involved practically all DASF field staff in data collection. Field extension staff were required to undertake and write-up a major project on village agriculture as part of their orientation program, while departmental officers and visiting researchers undertook innovative projects to better understand and document village agricultural systems during the 1970s and early 1980s. Much of the basic data pertaining to Papua New Guinea village agriculture was collected in this period and there was a greatly expanded interest in the day-to-day operations, including the strengths and weaknesses, of local farming systems.
An important element of the colonial agricultural administration that was not given prominence in the 1977 workshop was the high level of autonomy due to its Australian heritage. The professionals of DASF reported to generalist administrators in Canberra who had limited capacity to analyze the complexities of Papua New Guinea agriculture, so there was little policy initiative from the centre. Moreover, DASF headquarters officials in Port Moresby were isolated, both physically and culturally, from the day-to-day operations of the district office and research station. Individual field officers therefore had a high degree of latitude in formulating their own policies and programs. It was an opportunity that many exercised to the full.
Papua New Guinea’s transition to independence occurred toward the end of the decolonization era. It had become fashionable to blame the focus on export crops for the ills of developing countries, and ‘self-reliance’ had become the catch-cry for newly independent nations. In Papua New Guinea, visiting experts and local politicians were soon urging more self-reliance in the agricultural sector through increased production of grain crops to replace imports. They made little headway within the technically orientated DASF, which could now draw on empirical data to show that village farmers sought to maximize the returns to labour. This was a matter of considerable frustration to politicians taking up the agriculture portfolio. The flamboyant former minister of Agriculture, Iambakey Okuk, called a meeting of DASF staff in Goroka in early 1973 to express his views that the heavy expenditure that continued to be made in research was irrelevant to the country’s needs.