Tonga hosts Pacific Breadfruit Meeting [1]
Friday, September 16, 2016 - 22:12
About 70% of Tonga’s annual breadfruit yield just rots on the ground and only 30% is consumed as food and for export, a Pacific Breadfruit Roundtable Meeting held in Tonga, learned this week. But breadfruit exports are increasing rapidly.
The Pacific Breadfruit Roundtable Meeting was officially launched by Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni, Tonga's Deputy Prime Minister at the Nishi Farm, ‘Utulau, on Thursday 15 September.
The two days roundtable meeting, from 15-16 September, the first of its kind to be held in Tonga, was organized by the Tonga's farmer organisations - GroFED, MORDI and Nishi Foundation in partnership with the Pacific Island Farmers Organisation Network (PIFON).
Breadfruit is abundant throughout Tonga, in bush allotments and home gardens.
To’imoana Taataka, Chairman of the Growers Federation of Tonga, said that about 70% of Tonga’s annual breadfruit yield just rots on the ground, and only 30% is consumed as food and for export.
The Deputy PM in his opening remarks pointed out that Tonga’s breadfruit exports are increasing rapidly considering that in 2007 Tonga exported only 80 kilos of breadfruits, but in 2015 exported 66 tonnes of breadfruits.
The Pacific Breadfruit Roundtable Meeting attracted participants from Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Hawaii.
The Chairman of PIFON, Afamasaga, said the roundtable meeting enabled islands growers to share their knowledge, helping them to meet their challenges, which he identified as food security, climate change and development.