Tropical Homegardens - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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R.R. THAMAN T
ET AL.
ownership of crops; and neighbors’ unfavorable response to gardening or livestock
rearing (Thaman, 1995).
In Port Moresby, hillside gardening has once again become the focus of
criticism, on the grounds that it causes environmental damage, to the point that, in
2005, the Prime Minister promised publicly a legislation to ban it (Quartermain,
2005). Constraints to expanded homegardening are the greatest in Kiribati, Tuvalu,
the Marshall Island, and Nauru, where extremely poor soils, limited water
availability, and very high population densities, especially in South Tarawa and at
Location, Nauru, are serious problems. Among the indigenous Nauruans, who are
considered to be 100% urbanized, extremely high per capita incomes from
phosphate royalties in the past and a resulting overdependence on imported foods
seem to be the major disincentive to urban food gardening. The problem is
complicated in Funafuti, where the soil from over half of the highest quality land on
the main urban islet of Fogafale was excavated during World War II to build a
runway, leaving only soil-less “borrow pits” of no agricultural utility.
1.8. Future prospects of urban and homegarden agroforestry
The importance of urban and homegarden agroforestry and its implications for
planning are not clearly understood by most planners and policymakers in the
Pacific islands because of a lack of quantitative data on its nature, extent, and
cultural and ecological significance. There is little sign of a continuation of the
interest once shown by some city planners and administrators. For example, the Port
Moresby Housing Commission’s survey of urban gardening in the early 1970s and
the studies by the Committee on Food Supplies of the Solomon Islands (1974) of the
production of major staple crops (primarily sweet potato) in Honiara stressed the
need to increase production per capita in both rural and urban areas. Fitzroy (1981)
pointed out the correlation between vitamin deficiencies in “urbanized” people
without garden plots in Honiara. Although further studies stressing the importance
of urban and homegardens have been conducted since the mid-1970s, there is still a
need for more information on the problems faced by gardeners, such as crops that do
best under conditions of increasing pressure on land and deteriorating soils, best
practices in terms of soil conservation and improvement, successful models for
promoting urban and homegardening, and, models for the propagation and
distribution of desirable cultivars of particularly useful plants.
Nevertheless, there are some hopeful signs in favor of urban and homegarden
agroforestry in the region. Among these are the continued efforts supporting the
spread of kitchen gardening (“supsup” gardens) in Solomon Islands (Jansen et al.,
2001), recognition by the National Agricultural Research Institute and other bodies
in Papua New Guinea of the continuing importance of urban gardening and the need
for remediation of erosion problems (Quartermain, 2005), and the international Slow
Food movement 5 , which promotes the appreciation of locally-grown food, and is
gaining ground in Hawai’i.