The First Melanesian Farmers' Seed Saving Conference

30 November 2003
The First Melanesian Farmers' Seed Saving Conference was held in June 2003 at Choiseul Bay, the most westerly point of The Solomon Islands. Seed Savers helped to organise the attendance of several representatives of sustainable agriculture groups in Melanesian countries.

The Conference was held in the Choiseul Bay Public School hall

Map showing the site of the conference and travel modes of participants

Amy Glastonbury, Local Seed Network Coordinator, reports:-

There were twenty five overseas participants and another one hundred and fifteen from every province of the Solomon Islands. I gave a workshop on local seed networks and coordinated taking the notes for the whole conference. We all visited a project funded by Seed Savers in 2002, the trialling of one hundred traditional varieties of taro, a highly nutritive root crop, collected on the island of Choiseul.

Some two years prior to the conference Seed Savers made forward plans with Tony Jansen, Director of the overarching host organisation the Kastom Gaden Association and also a founding member of the direct host organisation, The Planting Material Network (PMN). In the intervening time Jude Fanton and I liaised with the PMN on the timing, location, format and content of the conference and sought funding from AusAID for participants from other Melanesian countries. With the PMN we identified and chose suitable participants, organised their itineraries and payment of their fares and other expenses.

At the conference Jude and I gave a two-hour workshop on coordinating a local seed network, to which some fifteen participants came. We had been asked to do this workshop as the PMN is keen to decentralise its activities. Jude and I described the process The Seed Savers’ Network in Australia has undergone in decentralising into local groups across Australia and related this to the activities of the PMN. From the workshop we established that the farmers were keen to have the local groups coordinated by farmers themselves rather than PMN staff and identified several farmers who were willing to begin a local group.

During the conference I coordinated the documentation of the conference. This involved taking notes, and organising others to do so, on all sessions of the conference, both presentations and workshops. I then compiled these into a document at the end of the conference. Jude and I also assisted with conference logistics, took care of participants from other countries and assisted them with their presentations.

After the conference, representatives from East Timor and Vanuatu, Jude and I went by canoe to a PMN Centre at a rural training centre on the island of Kolombangara. We stayed two nights in a leaf hut, toured the rural training centre and learnt how the PMN works in the western province. The second night we gave a talk to the students and staff of the training centre and teachers' training college.

Back in Honiara Jude and I gave workshops to the staff and students and I put the conference notes in order.

Impressions of the Conference

The conference was very well organised through the efforts of staff and volunteers of the PMN. Previous students on attachment to the PMN from rural training centres were in roles of registering participants, giving out conference information, looking after participants and time keeping during talks. Staff of the PMN, many of whom had not had experience of speaking to such a large crowd, were given the role of running the lecture and workshop sessions to improve their public speaking skills.

Presentations were given by representatives from all provinces of The Solomons, some of them in pidgin, the lingua franca. The participants really enjoyed the farmers' presentations.

All the international participants made presentations. Those that particularly interested me were:

Conservation of plant genetic resources by Luigi Guarino of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community,

Domestication of fruit and nut trees on Kolombangara by an indigenous PhD student,

Traditional polyculture in Temotu province,

Sea vegetable identification, use and preparation in Vanuatu,

East Timor's seed situation,

How the Farm Support Association of Vanuatu works.

Workshops were practical for the most part with activities such as nursery skills, seed saving, preparing sea vegetables and poultry keeping. Some were theoretical such as coordinating a local seed network. The participants, as always, complained of too much choice, a challenge for all conference organisers.

The PMN coped very well with the logistics of organising participants from all over The Solomons as well as several participants from a half a dozen countries. This involved meeting and farewelling them at the airport at several different times and arranging accommodation and transport by ship and plane to and from the western end of the archipelago.

All the food at the conference was local, except that a small amount of Australian rice was served. Shellfish, fish, mudcrab, many species of greens and root vegetables, cooked papaya, eggplant, snake beans and many fruits came out every meal. This was in keeping with the theme and message of the conference and really made a strong impression on the participants.

The accommodation was comfortable, but basic. It was a good demonstration to participants from other NGOs on how to make people feel welcome without having to spend a lot of money. The ship used for transporting the participants to and from the conference was a rusty, rounded and slow vessel that was not comfortable for the national participants who slept on the steel deck with inadequate cover from the rain. However the international participants were sheltered in a small cabin and were comfortable enough. Because that ship was to be late coming to pick up the participants afterwards, a small party of international participants took a canoe for 200 km to another island to tour the PMN facilities there. Fortunately the sea was calm.

On the fourth day we visited, by logging truck, a collection of 100 taro varieties that Seed Savers had funded in 2002 and the farmer had kept them in magnificent health. An Italian scientist, Luigi Guarino, who works on the Secretariat for the Pacific Community (SPC) Taro Gen project was impressed with the varietal diversity, labelling and standard of the collection.

Outcomes of the Conference

An outcome for the international participants is the strengthening of the Melanesian Farmers Network (MFN) that is already in train, auspiced by The Kastom Gaden Association, which also hosts the PMN. Discussion points were proposed for the next MFN meeting in October and the possibility of a conference in two or three years time was discussed. Seed Savers' Network offered to help with organising such a conference.

Several of the overseas participants were inspired to take up seed saving activities back in their countries. Luigi Guarino from SPC offered help with further taro collections in The Solomons and to promote and network about the efficacy of farmer collections of planting material.

For myself and our organisation, it was a confirmation that farmer-to-farmer training and dialogue is effective and powerful as a tool for making a difference to understanding food security and measures to improve it.

The national participants, members of The Planting Material Network, resolved to devolve into local networks, run by farmers, rather than regional centres with paid NGO staff. They made several resolutions on PMN policy against the introduction of genetically engineered plants and the dumping of industrial waste in The Solomons so that a spokesperson could speak on their behalf on these issues.