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Betel Nut, Coconuts/Copra, Chocolate, Strawberries, Coffee, Apples, Spam and Fish in Papua New Guinea: From Ancient Farming, Highly Bred Species and Sustainability Concepts over Diseases and DNA into Global Market Repercussions and Wholesale (Environmental) Bankruptcy

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Globalization and Papua New Guinea: Ancient Wilderness, Paradise, Introduced Terror and Hell

Abstract

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a tropical nation and blessed with biodiversity as a cradle of farming for many of the world’s species deeply enjoyed by humans. It holds one of the first known and documented human agriculture and sustainable products and lifestyles. However, in the modern global agenda and with a sole focus on ‘cash crops’ PNG has a difficult time to compete and to integrate itself in the wider global market forces of globalization and its production scheme. Using examples of betel nut, coconuts/copra, chocolate, strawberries, coffee, apples, spam, fish and others, I show how PNG copes, what the typical and specific problems are of tropical nations and with the highly commercialized and wrongly copyrighted food commodity market neoliberal in nature harming Mother Earth and food security in a hyped-up boom-and-bust cycle spiraling downwards on finite soil and earth.

Thanks to the work of women only a very few Papua New Guineans go hungry

Gosarevski et al. (2015, p. 144)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is usually achieved though agronomists. Similar to foresters, or resource economists, those tend to be people that advise farmers on what to cultivate and how. As those experts tend to come from the western world and are trained there, they often are urbanuzed and have a much higher salary than the farmers themselves, which makes it for an odd trust and advisee relationship. Cynical people speak of Agronomy, spelled as 'AgronoMe'. However, the recent global trend to promote for GMOs is extremely problematic while local cultivates are getting lost on a global rate.

  2. 2.

    For the curious mind, there is a very interesting shism in ‘conservative’ farming. Considering much of the farming community hails itself as ‘conservative’ and connected to the ground and nature, promoting hunting, subsistence life and the control of wolves and coyotes, etc. When it comes to their political lobby, they are widely on the other side though, very far progressive aligning with latest commercialization, high-tech tractor machinery, seeds, DNA clones and international fertilizer trade to make ends meet. Very few of those 'conservative' political farming lobbies are truly on the organic or vegetarian side, or truly ‘green’ (which might carry more the label of a ‘hippy commune’). While this is not found directly in PNG it’s certainly found in Australia’s farmers, as well as with the western agronomists involved in PNG advice. It also affects the farming products for western markets.

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  1. -EWHALE Lab-, Department of Biology and Wildlife, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Fairbanks, 99775, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Huettmann, F. (2023). Betel Nut, Coconuts/Copra, Chocolate, Strawberries, Coffee, Apples, Spam and Fish in Papua New Guinea: From Ancient Farming, Highly Bred Species and Sustainability Concepts over Diseases and DNA into Global Market Repercussions and Wholesale (Environmental) Bankruptcy. In: Globalization and Papua New Guinea: Ancient Wilderness, Paradise, Introduced Terror and Hell. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20262-9_10

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