ABSTRACT
Few countries in the world are so characterised by a predominantly rural population that is oriented to subsistence agricultural production as Papua New Guinea. Though no Papua New Guineans now live beyond the influence of monetisation and the purchase of commodities, self-sufficiency still plays a substantial role for most. Root crops, and to a lesser extent bananas and sago, have always been the principal food. Sweet potato is the most important of these, though taro dominated some island regions until quite recently, and yams hold great cultural significance in lowland areas such as the Trobriand islands and the Sepik region. Coconuts are ubiquitous on the coast. Bananas grow in most parts of the country and sugar cane, indigenous to New Guinea, is also widespread. Sago production remains extremely important in the swampy western lowlands of the Fly, Purari and Sepik river systems, and as far east as Bougainville still plays some role at times of famine and feast (Connell and Hamnett 1978). Few crops produced elsewhere in the tropical Pacific are not grown in PNG, and more than 400 species are grown for food, a response to enormous variations in altitude, rainfall and soils. All traditional agricultural systems were of considerable complexity, incorporating a variety of plants, though diversity was climatically restricted at high altitudes. Everywhere some hunting and gathering, and fishing
in lowland and coastal areas, were combined with sedentary agriculture. A tiny minority of societies, on the highlands fringes, were almost exclusively hunters and gatherers. Except in the most remote and inhospitable regions, subsistence agriculture is now combined with commercial cash crop cultivation. Agricultural systems have changed, often dramatically. One of the most significant transformations was the introduction of sweet potato. In the course of about three centuries sweet potato spread from Asia replacing taro and other root crops as the leading food; this happened centuries ago in the highlands but only in the 1940s on the island of Bougainville, a thousand kilometres to the east, after taro blight destroyed the former staple. Throughout PNG, agricultural systems have continually evolved, as experimentation results in new techniques and new varieties. Indeed local agriculturalists have been described as ‘pathological innovators’ (Waddell 1972:192), constantly seeking out and introducing new species. Since European contact the pace of agricultural innovation has increased with new plant species and domesticated animals. In one Eastern Highlands village, where there was no direct contact with Europeans until 1928 and very little for another quarter of a century, of the eighty-seven food and narcotic crops in the village in 1984, some fifty-two had been introduced since first contact (Bourke 1990), including corn, cassava, pumpkin, beans, potatoes and peanuts. Similar changes have brought greater diversity throughout PNG.
