Subsistence Agriculture in Melanesia

Abstract

The inhabitants in Melanesia which contains the largest island of the tropics, New Guinea, and other larger ones than those in Polynesia and Micronesia, seem more active for agricultural production than in the other regions mentioned above. When we analyze the structure of the agricultural system in Melanesia, it is convenient, just as in the cases of most developing countries in the tropics, to divide it into two sectors, i. e., commercial agriculture and subsistence production. Most of the researchers engaged in the various aspects of subsistence agriculture in Melanesia, which is very often called horticulture conventionally by Westerners, agree on the view that the staple foods of the majority of the inhabitants there have been Colocasia taros and yams since very old limes. In some areas, however, the people have been ingesting mostly sago starch or bananas including plantains. Besides these crops, other fruits, such as coconuts and bread fruits, have also been very frequently consumed by Melanesians as well as Polynesians and Micronesians. Talking about the present situation of subsistence agriculture or horticulture in many regions of Melanesia, we cannot disregard the great and growing importance of sweet potato and cassava as the inhabitants’ basic sources of food energy. Of these two crops, in some regions, the former has been maintaining the position of staple food from an old or relatively recent time. For example, according to the popular view, more than 300 years have already elapsed since the primary food in the New Guinean Highlands changed from taros and/or yams to sweet potatoes. The data on the basis of FAO sources in the first half of the 1980’s elucidated that the leading country for the per capita production of sweet potatoes (193 kg/year) was the Solomon Islands. In that country, however, it was not a very ancient date but around 1960 that sweet potato was considered to become the crop for the staple food of most people there. This is endorsed by many reports having been published since the 1950’s. The major and direct reason for the change of the primary crop in the Solomon Islands was the spread, throughout that country, of pathogenic blight-producing fungi and of a beetle pest both of which are specific to taros. In addition to this direct reason, however, the following circumstances are considered to have certainly related to the preceding change:
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Summarizing these respects stated above, sweet potatoes are surely superior to taros or yams concerning labor productivity and security in the sense that the farmers rarely lack their subsistence requirements. This is probably the prime reason why the cultivation of sweet potatoes has become immensely and widely popular in the Solomon Islands from the 1950’s. The change of the staple food of the inhabitants there needed a trigger such as the spread of pest and blight but was, however, basically due to changes of social circumstances.