My Nanumaga Agriculture Contract

The Agriculture Extension and Information Division of the Department of Agriculture was reformed with more officers in 2017. The new officers was send to work with “Kaupule o Fenua” (Island Councils) to assist them with Agriculture data collection, farming systems especially interacting in hands-on practical activities to any interested farmers for 3 consecutive years.

My station is Nanumaga Island, the second farthest island to the North of Tuvalu. The Nanumaga Island Farmers Association, NIFA, was a newly established association and was the only association an Agriculture & Livestock mini Survey was conducted to on the island. The survey was mainly focusing in collecting of Food Security factors such as Livestock, Agroforestry farming systems and Vegetation farming system. Surprisingly, the outcomes was above my expectation. Note data below:

Number of NIFA farmers reviewed		Number of Livestock
Female farmers	Male farmers	Swine	Ducks	Chicken
8	37	327	210	2.559

(Lutelu, 2017)

According to findings, the main issue they faced was the impact of climate change to their farming systems. Past recurring disasters have been playing a major role in damaging their farming systems, especially to NIFA and their Agroforestry systems. Agroforestry growth was seemingly a secondary growth during visual evaluation in time of survey. A few NIFA farmers return to Home Gardening, and the rest just continue with Agroforestry Harvesting. Out of the 45 NIFA farmers, 35 of them have cemented pulaka pits from a project.

The Kaupule o Nanumaga (Nanumaga Island Council) with the assistance from the Agriculture Extension & Information officer, together with their two field laborers planned on new strategies and activities to enhance food security systems to the communities. It was a successful planning where a number of priorities was authorized through from Falekaupule to continue work on maintenance of the Agricultural nursery, improving plant protection by identifying island to island importation threats, new integrating vegetation and agroforestry farming systems, the development of a new Agroforestry site, eradication of the Yellow Crazy Ant (YCA) and the shipment recording of quantity of local food export commodities. All these priorities were initiated and continue to date.

Further down on memory lane, a few fail planning was meant to happen. Nevertheless, other steps were taken to oversee those fail attempts. During mid-2018, a new Tuvalu Telecommunication Corporation (TTC) project was initiated with the setup of a satellite WIFI dish. And for a good connection, the better location for the dish was the location of the new maintenance nursery. Due to the impact to vegetation from radiation from the dish, the nursery was shut down and relocate to a new site. The new site was name the new “Agriculture Station” where a setup of a new Nursery, water cisterns, a monitoring space, Compost Pit, and Livestock Housing (Piggery, Chicken Shed, and Duck Shelter)

Since the Nanumaga Kaupule Agriculture Sector budget was not strong to cope all the provision for the new Agriculture station, a proposal was created with the intention for an overseas grant to finance the provision of materials for the new Agriculture station, unless the Tuvalu Government through the Department of Agriculture (DOA) in its capacity can assist with financing