SG (Slot)

Atoll agriculture is important in the South Pacific as
there are over 270 atoll islands in this region. These are
low lying coralline sands and most have a freshwater lens
which is tapped for domestic water but also in some cases
used for agriculture. The main form of working in this
system is to dig a hole often to the freshwater lens so that
the crop (often swamp taro) can have its roots in the freshwater.
Extensive use of mulch is also used in this system as
it is in many traditional gardens to help consume water but
also to supply some nutrients in an essentially sterile
system. In the larger atoll islands traditional multistorey
gardens occur and many have coconuts as a stable crop. The
fragile nature of the islands makes extensive mechanised
agriculture difficult.
To sum up the situation in relation to land preparation or
tillage systems in the Pacific Region it is apparent that
increasing population and higher standards of living are the
motivation for increased agricultural production. In landscapes
that are fragile, the atoll island, or the steep slopes
of the high islands agriculture must first attain to a
sustainable system. It is probably irrelevant to think of
large scale mechanisation because of small sizes of farms,
high cost of mechanisation and inaccessibility. The IBSRAM
PACIFICLAND project is entitled ''The Management of Sloping
Lands for Sustainable Smallholder Agriculture in the Pacific".
In this network of experiments the emphasis is not on
mechanisation but on smallholders and sustainability and in a
number of the experiments the land preparation will be done
by hand.
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Lee, R., Searle, P.L., Leslie, D.M. and Widdowson, J.P. 1989.
The distribution of the major soil groups of the Southern
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