Push for Tonga to commit to organic farming within five years

Transcript

The chair of Tonga's National Youth Congress says they hope the entire country will commit to organic farming within five years.

The Congress, with the Civil Society Forum and the Tonga National Leadership Forum staged a public dialogue on organic farming on Tuesday.

The Ha'apai Group committed to becoming fully organic two years ago and the Congress chairman, Drew Havea, says the meeting drew strong support from the largest island, Tongatapu, to go through the same process.

Mr Havea spoke with Don Wiseman who began by asking about the extent of pesticide use in Tonga.

DREW HAVEA: I think squash pumpkin is one of our major exports, although it's declining which has a bigger input of pesticides and also fertiliser, so is watermelon. So not a large number that is in that part of commercial farming, but I think the question for us is how can we provide organic fertiliser? How can we change the input that are not organic so we have organic input for the farmers to use.

DON WISEMAN: Will you be able to produce the organic material you need in Tonga, or will you have to import it?

DH: I think we'll have to import. At the same time we have started processes like composting, which is enough for individual farmers. However, when we look at commercial farming we need major input so those have to be imported and I am not sure, but that may cost a lot more than the current non-organic input that we may have here in Tonga. I think also for this change we'll have to do a lot more research to look at our soil, to look at our water, to look at our ecosystem, to look at the biodiversity of the country taking into consideration climate change. So there's a lot of things that will come with the whole organic transformation if we get Tonga to move into the world of organic.

DW: As you say, the bulk of the country's commercial farmers are on Tongatapu. So how long will it take do you think, if you've allowed until 2016 for Ha'apai, how long do you think until you convince everyone, or have them organic on Tongatapu?

DH: Well, it's a process of three years before one farm can be certified. By the end of next year we will have close to 2,000 farmers in Tongatapu. There are two ways in which we go about doing this; it's certifying individual farmers, or certifying whole islands. I think for most of Ha'apai it's quite easy to certify whole islands, but for Tongatapu we have to do individual farmers so it will probably take us five years but it will be a strong push and I think we need the strong support of government donors to help the farmers through this period of transition, and at the same time I think we need to make sure that the crop that they have has a market which will in turn drive things to move much faster, but we have started in Tongatapu, we have some farmers on Vava'u, on other islands and I think it's just us getting the momentum.