Organic Roots: How Ancient Farming Is Feeding the Pacific

In Papua New Guinea and across the Pacific, people have been growing and eating their own food for thousands of years. But today, those traditions are under threat. Introduced crops, climate change, and changing tastes are making it harder for communities to hold onto the foods that have fed them for generations. A Papua New Guinean TV host, an organic farming expert, and a festival organizer are all working to make sure those traditions survive.

Jennifer Baing grew up in Papua New Guinea eating foods that most people outside the Pacific have never tried. As a child, she caught tiny insects called cicadas, roasted them over a fire, and went hunting for bandicoot with her cousins. She also fished in rivers using tools made from cane and a traditional woven material called bilum. The small fish she caught were cooked with tapioca and seasoned with salt made from coconut husk.

For Jennifer, food is deeply personal. She remembers watching her grandmother cook a purple sweet potato called mamak narung in a clay pot filled with coconut cream. The bright purple color has stayed in her memory all her life. But when her grandmother passed away, no one kept the seeds going, and that sweet potato variety was lost from her family's garden.

This kind of loss is called food extinction, and it is happening all over the world. In Papua New Guinea, many plant seeds are kept alive by specific families who pass them down through the generations. If the next generation loses interest in farming, those plants can disappear forever. Traditional foods like yams, taro, and certain types of bananas are slowly vanishing because young people are choosing easier or cheaper options instead.

One major change Jennifer has noticed is that people in her region are cutting down banana gardens that are 40 to 60 years old. They replace them with cocoa plants so they can sell cocoa and buy rice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who had kept their banana gardens had plenty to eat, while those who had cut them down sometimes had to steal food from neighbors. Jennifer says this shows just how important it is to keep traditional food systems alive.

Half of the world's organic farming land is found in Oceania, which includes the Pacific island nations. Karen Mapusua is the president of iFoam Organics International, a group that teaches people about organic farming. She says the Pacific has always had organic farming at its heart — it is just that the formal rules and the name are new. Before the 1970s, most Pacific nations farmed without any chemical pesticides or fertilizers at all.

Karen explains that organic farming is about more than just avoiding chemicals. It means taking care of the soil through composting, protecting water sources, and increasing biodiversity by growing many different types of plants and animals together. Organic farms are better able to survive extreme weather events, like the droughts and heavy rains that come with El Niño. This makes organic farming especially important as climate change brings more unpredictable weather to the Pacific.

Deep in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea lies the Kuk Valley, one of the most important farming sites in the world. People have been growing food there for around 10,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuing agricultural practices ever discovered. The Kuk Valley is now listed as an official UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its fertile land helps feed much of Papua New Guinea. Local resident Emmanuel Yu has started a cultural festival to celebrate this long history of farming and to make sure young people never forget it.

The message from everyone in this story is the same. The Pacific's traditional farming knowledge is a treasure that took thousands of years to build. By combining old knowledge with new tools and practices, Pacific communities hope to keep their food systems strong for generations to come.