Business and Development

Bananas To The Rescue Of

Ailing Fiji Agriculture!

From a PIM correspondent in Vanua Levu.

I Faced with falling production, dis ease and hurricane Bebe which flat tened almost all the banana groves in the Waidina and Wainimala valleys on Viti Levu, Fiji is looking to the copra planters of Vanua Levu to pull the banana industry out of the mire.

Aiming to recapture the New Zealand market, which has been “invaded” by the handsome Ecuadorian banana, the government has approached copra planters in the Savusavu area to plant 280 acres of bananas, producing a minimum of 64,000 cases a year.

This, says the Ministry of Agri culture, is the minimum required to ‘justify an overseas ship calling at Savusavu and then sailing direct to New Zealand about 16 times a year”.

Fhis wording suggests the ministry is thinking of “giving away” the tradi tional planters on Viti who, with he withdrawal years ago of the European planters from the industry, lave been fighting a losing battle igainst climate, disease and the South American banana.

The circular announcing the plan aught the Savusavu planters by sur irise—they’ve not thought about lananas for years. To ensure the ndustry (around Savusavu) “is stablished quickly and firmly”, it iaid, “development on a ‘nucleus’ state system is envisaged.” Initially, the system would consist n about 20 estates, each planting no ess than 10 acres of bananas. Future levelopment would be made up from mailer producers and the expansion )f the estate acreage. At the outset, he scheme would be confined to the »vusavu and Buca Bay areas to snsure “easy access to a loading 3oint and to ease problems of organi sation and co-ordination”. This would ®ean that Savusavu would be the hading centre, which raises an in teresting point. 4 The ministry talked in terms of an overseas vessel calling direct at Savu savu but Savusavu is not a port or mtry for Fiji. Presumably, the ship

would have to call at Suva first, in which case the planters on the Rewa would have a chance to load their bananas and so preserve their place in the industry, or Savusavu would be declared a port of entry with customs and other services. This would raise a howl from Labasa which has been laying claim to the right to be a port of entry.

A time-table has been drawn up by the ministry which proposes that Savusavu planting should begin in February, 1973, with 50,000 suckers available for 70 acres. The same acreage would be planted in March, April and May, so that the whole planting operation would take only four months. Eight months later would come the first of the harvest, 4.000 cases. Then would follow 8.000 in November, 9,000 in Decem ber and 12,000 in January, 1974.

Production would then be at the rate of 9,000 to 12,000 cases a month until February, 1976 when the trees would be ploughed out and the area replanted with alternative crops.

The ministry estimated that the net profit over three years for 900 cases per acre on the best estates would be $283 an acre, with a net profit of $133 an acre for “fair” estates and only $5B for “poor” estates. The suggestion is that the first 200 acres should be handled by the big estates, most of them Euro pean-owned, with smaller Fijian

estates dividing up the other 80 acres between them.

The scheme got a cautious recep tion from the Savusavu planters who, however, are willing to look at any thing which will lift them out of the copra doldrums which have turned the once-wealthy estates into de pressed areas. Some copra planters are already diversifying but, until now, they’ve not thought about bananas as an alternative income source. Bananas, say some of them, have too many enemies and crops would need much closer attention than the coconut.

This isn’t the first time the govern ment has turned its eyes towards Vanua Levu and its coconut plan tations for succour for the banana industry. During the 19605, the first Development Commissioner, Mr Eric Bevington, had dreams of large banana plantations near Labasa. It had been suggested that Japan would become Fiji’s largest banana market; that Japan would take logs from the area and then the bananas which would be planted where the forests had stood.

The Japanese were after a timber concession and also a base for their fishing fleets. They got their base which is now flourishing at Levuka.

The rest was just pure banana oil. A trial shipment of bananas from Viti Levu to Japan turned out a disaster; the Japanese would talk no more about bananas.