Nadi Demo Site under USAID project

Project Background

Maintaining long-term food security has emerged as a major issue in the Pacific region, and climate change, with its associated extreme weather events, is likely to adversely impact food production in the coming decades.

SPC and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with partner agencies, are supporting the governments of six Pacific countries – Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu – in their efforts to tackle the adverse effects of climate change on food production. The support includes updating vegetation and land cover maps at the national level, and working with local communities to implement appropriate adaptation measures to build their resilience to climate change.

The initiative, entitled Enhanced climate change resilience of food production systems in Pacific Island countries and territories, will evaluate and increase the resilience of land-based food production systems.

The project harnesses an innovative partnership between two SPC divisions, the Applied Geoscience and Technology Division (SOPAC) and the Land Resources Division (LRD). SOPAC is providing geographic information system (GIS) data to LRD enabling more accurate and informed implementation of climate change resilience activities on the ground.

The project started in the latter part of 2012, and already activities for the Fiji site (Sabeto catchment area in Nadi) are under way.

The Sabeto area was chosen as project site for its best fit to the ‘ridge-to-reef’ approach and suitability for developing adaptation strategies.

Activities so far include the completion of a vegetation mapping exercise; community consultations through participatory rural appraisal (PRA) to assess the vulnerability of food security to climate change; and the establishment of community nurseries of fruit trees, native timber species, vegetables and root crops.

In its second year now, activities are under way to establish demonstration plots to trial adaptation practices at the community level. This activity necessitated the establishment of village project coordinating committees (there are four villages in the Sabeto area).

This work is facilitated by LRD staff with the assistance of the Fiji Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Establishment of demo Agroforestry Site

Two models of agroforestry system were chosen. Flat land model farm was to demonstrate growing of high value crops such as capsicum, tomatoes, eggplant, chilies, lettuce with different types of beans such as french bean and long bean.

On the boundaries of this model farm, fruit tress such as citrus, sour soup, guava,citrus,starfruit together with economical trees such as sandalwood were planted.

Photo caption: Two students from Vaturu District are planting sandalwood on the boundary of flatland demo site.

Apart from community members, students of Vaturu District School were also involved in the planting exercise for number of reason that includes:

Sustainability in technology transfer

Enticing youths into farming

Enabling them to understand the importance of food security and negative impact of climate change.

Similarly, the slope land demo site was also established with an aim to demonstrate good farming practices that will ensure food security, income generation and sustainable land management (SLM) .

Using A frame, contour was designed to carryout planting.On the peak of slope indigenous tree species such as Vesi (Intsia Bijuga) , Dakua (Agathis vitiensis) and sandalwood (Santalum yasi) were planted. One the second contour, Pineapples were incoporated and on the boundaries of contour, a row of vertiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) was planted. Along 1.2m of vertiver grass, various fruit trees were planted such as citrus, guava, starfruit, sour soup, bullocks heart and kavika. Plants like cinnamon were also incorporated.

*The A Frame is an A shaped structure made from wooden poles or thin metal poles that can be easily constructed and used to peg flat or graded contours or water drains. These contours are mostly used as soil and water conservation structures.

On the third tier, yams were planted with proper staking. and then sweet potato came in on fourth contour. Other root crops were also planted on the final contour. Fruit trees such as breadfruit and coconut were planted on the boundary of the model farm, breadfruit was chosen to be closer to the access road while coconut was on the other side.