New book promotes sandalwood cultivation in Vanuatu

Transcript

A guide to cultivating sandalwood trees in Vanuatu has been published with support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

A Forestry Officer in Vanuatu, Jude Tabi, told Jenny Meyer the new book is a useful tool for people looking to diversify their land use.

JUDE TABI; Before people did not know how to cultivate the sandalwood. Because it is seen as a shrubwood and it grows in the wild with other trees. It's a sort of a parasitic plant that needs other trees to feed on. So they've done studies to look at the host plants that could be planted with the tree in the open areas like if you have a sandalwood farm, what sort of species that would be planted with the sandalwood so that it can grow to a product that is required on the market. This is what the research has done.

JENNY MEYER;  Which are the most common host trees that are used for that purpose?

JT; The most common ones that are being introduced now and are being told to the farmers to plant are the citrus, citrus trees.

JM; And are their instructions in the book, are there pictures and is it easy for people to follow?

JT; The book is in our local language and there's some English translations. It was printed in English first and then we did translations later in Bislima which is our local language here. And it is easy to read and there's a lot of pictures that show you what to do.

JM; And is it hoped that more people will take up the practice of growing and harvesting the trees?

JT;  At the moment, the current rate it keeps on increasing year by year because the demand outside is quite big and we cannot supply the demand. So people are going into planting sandalwood but not on large scale plantations. But they plant it with gardens, we call them 'agro-forestry'. We're encouraging people to plant their food for the markets as well as planting trees within the crops. People are very interested because while they are growing their own crops they are growing trees at the same time. At the end of the rotation which is about 15 years to 20 years you can harvest your trees after your food has all gone.

JM; So it this seen more as a small scale development for many people, rather than one or two people doing large scale planting?

JT; That is right. The problem with large scale planting because land areas in Vanuatu are quite small, we have quite small islands. But for the purpose of planting sandalwood you need good ground where the topography is easy to access when you're harvesting because it's quite heavy stuff because we need to use all the roots and the trunks and some of the branches that have hard woods in them, so you need to cultivate an area that is quite easy to access.