Official ‘policy making’ has become increasingly irrelevant to farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector. While officials have dithered over impractical proposals, farmers have got on with the job of producing food and cash crops. The evidence is that smallholders are efficient producers of traditional food crops for domestic markets and that they demonstrate strong supply responsiveness to prices. The success of vanilla in the early 2000s is an outstanding example of the latter.

The great majority of smallholders, however, face major constraints in moving to a more commercial form of production that delivers agricultural products that meet market requirements. Social norms, jealousy, factionalism and obligations within the village greatly inhibit the time available for surplus production and the motivation to achieve high incomes to a greater or lesser degree for different groups. Access to adequate areas of good agricultural land, inputs supply, and marketing services are also major factors affecting the response to agricultural opportunities. Taken together, these factors generate a wide range of diversity in the agricultural sector. Some individuals and groups demonstrate a remarkable capacity to respond to new challenges and opportunities; most do not.

Shielded from reality by supply-driven ‘solutions’, most policy makers have demonstrated limited appreciation of the diverse and dynamic nature of Papua New Guinea’s agricultural sector. The result is that policies — and extension effort — have been directed at households that were not responsive to the technology and work obligations being promoted. Nevertheless, since independence, many individuals are overcoming the odds and ‘breaking the chains’ of social and economic constraints to meet market requirements on a commercial basis. They include migrants who have taken up land near urban centres, individuals who have secured clear title to parcels of customary land, and outreach growers contracted to a central agency providing a tightly managed integrated package of inputs, technical advice, credit/banking, monitoring and transport services.

Unfortunately, neglect and the constraints of a Port Moresby-bound bureaucracy have left policy making bodies, particularly DAL, with little capacity to respond to the reality of the agriculture sector. DAL, in particular, has experienced a decline in analytical capacity and its policy making function has been reduced to political rhetoric. The result is a policy vacuum where documents pertaining to be ‘policy’ are little more than pleas to ‘turn the clock back’ to a perceived better past. Not only is this impractical, but the proposals are based on visions of establishing command-based organizations with highly centralized power structures. Such organizations have not worked in Papua New Guinea in the past and they are not likely to do so in future.

In this policy vacuum, outside consultants and technical experts have become highly influential in a piecemeal policy making process. Given the absence of practical policy guidance from government on key issues, industry bodies and lobby groups (including aid donors) have hired consultants and technical experts to formulate recommendations based on the perspective of the particular group. As there is an absence of policy analysis capacity to even examine these documents from a Papua New Guinea national perspective, they inevitably have a stronger influence than they would otherwise have. policy making in this environment therefore becomes a disjointed and fragmented process that generates contradictory policies shaped by various interest groups.

This situation is not helpful to Papua New Guinea agriculture, which needs to become more efficient and competitive in order to meet the challenges ahead. If DAL is to become an effective policy making body, a dramatic turnaround in approach and capacity is a prerequisite. The new DAL will need to revitalize itself as a small organization that works in partnership with key stakeholders to catalyze and facilitate realistic solutions, not a controller. It will also need to build its capacity to understand market systems, collect data, analyze and define problems, and then assemble and/or facilitate the resources of others to address these problems. This implies a new realism in terms of DAL’s concept of its role, its performance assessment systems and its reward structures.

The prospects for such an outcome are not bright. DAL has lost the confidence of government and industry as a respectable policy making body. Accordingly, there is limited support for its revitalization. Meanwhile, the agriculture sector limps along. Ironically, its prospects have been significantly enhanced by ‘policy failure’, in the form of the collapse of the kina, which has greatly enhanced the competitiveness of Papua New Guinea agriculture. The capacity of its agricultural industries to respond to these opportunities will depend primarily on the influence of social factors and security in the main agricultural areas and the market chain that links these producers with consumers. Most likely, agriculture policy makers in Port Moresby will remain irrelevant to this outcome.