Editor,

Back in 1996 I was instrumental in taking PPEL out of squash export for a number of valid economic reasons then and now. Not withstanding fact that PPEL was a victim of successive years of rampant poaching.

The underlying problem is a grower mindset that believes big is better and therefore the more acres under production the better will be the output whereas in fact the opposite applies i.e. economic law of diminishing marginal returns.

In Japan squash is generally produced from very high yielding 2 acre blocks, per grower, with commensurately far lower inputs than that incurred by the Tongan grower. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out the economic benefits of such arrangement.