Traditional Farming Techniques in Vanuatu

Teouma Bush

Vanuatu land is an island nation with a relatively small land area and population. Only one third of the total cultivable land is presently farmed. Transport services, both inter-island and intra-island are a major constraint to marketing and this to increasing productivity and the volume of production. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing sector accounts for around 15% of total GDP and for almost all merchandise exports.
Vanuatu is still agriculture-based economy with copra, cocoa, kava and cattle continuing to dominate the sector. Since 2003, the agriculture sector has grown at an annual rate of 3.3 percent compared to 2.8 percent growth for the economy and an average population growth rate of 2.6 percent per annum.
The domestic market for agricultural products is quite limited. While at least 80 percent of the population reside in the rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihood, productivity, particularly in the traditional crops sector, is quite low. The export of high value specialty commodities, particularly those that are organically grown, represents great potential. In order to increase the penetration of premium niche markets by these commodities, however, the volume of production must be increased. The challenge in agriculture is to increase production and productivity and improve marketing systems and market access for both traditional food crops and high value specialty commodities.

Vanuatu posses soils and climate that are conducive to timber production and environment in the world for raising beef cattle. The challenges for this sector will include ensuring replanting of trees at a rate at least equal to the volume being harvested; to foster the utilization of additional species; and to develop additional value-added processing. Developing a sustainable forestry sector will depend on attracting investors for developing larger commercial timber plantations.

Vanuatu Youths to Take On Organic Agriculture
Organic agriculture is a farming system that relies on working closely with the ecosystem without reliance on chemicals to increase yields or manage weeds and pests.  Organic agriculture is also one of the areas attracting young farmers in the pacific islands and worldwide. Against the backdrop of an aging farming population in the Pacific, organic agriculture has been identified as a means to get more young Pacific Islanders involved in farming.

The Community of Teouma, Teouma Futuna (Iarofa Cultural Village) have constructively used organic potential to implement an agricultural site to practice traditional farming with a solid Youth-led activities running on every Saturday to enhance youth knowledge in Agriculture.  This existing

Traditional Food Preservation Practices

youth organization was called the "Iasoa Faakaufou Association" in which most youths are citizens from Iasoa Village on The island of Futuna. The organization has strong  Christian relations and believes in Christianity with  a large support from their elders in the village.

Iasoa Faakaufou Association was born since the year 2000 in an alert cooperation among youth citizens from Iasoa community living in Port Vila to raise funds to support the Island Community with food and materials after cyclone GENE pass the Island. In the meantime, a solidarity of committed youths started to developed and capacity building pulling all young citizens from Iasoa who lives in Port Vila to form a committee and to show support to the generations of Iasoa people back in Islands.

In the Meantime, compare to other community in Futuna do not have the opportunity in holding together their youths as this community. The Youths practices a lot of generated activities within years that passes and later the year 2013 has deflects their reactions to implement agricultural practices using an agricultural organic from small subsistence farming for climate change adaptation and to generate income from a small land space.

Activities
In particular, the youth have undertake a lot of activity in a land area of 8 acres square meters bought by the Community of Iasoa in the South East of Efate island called "Teouma" Area. On January 2013, youths of Iasoa started this new program of agriculture which they firstly clear land for gardening but still using traditional farming techniques. This has brought them to realize very low yield of their products from cultivation and decided to change cultivation methodologies from a shifting culture to adapt to the changes.

Inter-cropping (Mix Cropping)
This technique have been practice from our ancestors since agriculture has begin from the existence of new crop varieties that has been introduce by explorers to our Islands. However, more than half of the population of Vanuatu still maintains this cultural practices and

Alley Cropping
This is a technique to allow root crops to have good


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