Transcript
A Samoan company hoping to gain a foothold in New Zealand's high-end organic food market says its focus is on providing sustainable products for future generations.
The company, Maiden South Pacific, recently introduced gluten free flour made from ulu, or breadfruit, and raw fermented coconut oil to the New Zealand market.
Leilani Momoisea reports.
One of the company's directors, Tiana Epati, says South Pacific brands are not being represented in organic markets. She says even when it comes to items people associate with the Pacific, like fresh coconuts and coconut oil, most of the product comes from Thailand. Tiana Epati says the idea for the business started to take shape when she went back to Samoa, and reconnected with the land, while also hearing villagers talk about not having enough money for food.
TIANA EPATI: There's coconut trees, papayas right there just right there falling to the ground, you name it, we got it. And just connecting it, seeing the murmurs of 'we don't have enough money just to buy simple foods', to seeing the luscious land. And then me being in the organic scene, connecting the three, and going, you know what? Why aren't we? Why aren't we represented in a high end way, and being sold in Farro [a NZ high-end supermarket], and real flash places like that.
The company's co-operative consultant, Kalala Mary Autagavaia, says they are working with farmers and families in Samoa, through the village matai, to utilise the land sustainably. She says it's about how they can benefit from the land, but doing so in a way that doesn't destroy the land, or alienate people from it. Kalala Mary Autagavaia says they'll be working around traditional family farming practices that already exist in Samoa.
KALALA MARY AUTAGAVAIA: Sure, we had large productions of copra and things like that, but when the price of copra dropped around the world, everything else crashed, and then we were left with large tracts of land that were being alienated, and families, villages were in limbo. So, for us, it's not trying to introduce new practices, but working with what we have, because what we have in the island has worked for us for thousands of years.
Papalii Grant Percival supplies Maiden South Pacific with the gluten free breadfruit flour. He's been researching and working on the product for about ten years, and says he now uses about 70 percent of Samoa's breadfruit. Papalii says it's always a decision made by the family as to whether they want to keep the breadfruit as a food choice, or to sell it to him for income generation. He says if he wasn't using the breadfruit, it would most likely be left to rot on the ground - but there's still potential for farmers to generate even more income.
PAPALII GRANT PERCIVAL: One of the farmers said, I've got 50 trees and I was just thinking, I've gotta cut it down, because I'm sick and tired of the smell. He says, you mean I can sell it to you and get money for it? I said, yes. If you just leave em, they grow really tall, but if you prune them and manage them you actually increase your yields quite substantially. Right now wild gathering is not giving me the yields and returns they should be. Or giving the farmers the yields and returns they should, because it's not being managed.
Maiden South Pacific says it also has an upcoming collaboration with the Wellington Chocolate Factory that will allow them to get about ten Samoan families involved in supplying koko Samoa to the New Zealand market. It says it hopes families in Samoa can think more about what can be done with the yields of the land they live on, and how they can contribute to the economy of food.
