Till today rice, wheat, and corn, do not form the staple food for the vast majority of Papua New Guineans. Their carbohydrate needs are still fulfilled by sweet potato, taro, yams, sago and bananas. Agriculture began in Papua New Guinea (PNG) about 10,000 years ago as shown by archaeological research where starch was found on stone tools excavated in Kuk in western highlands. It suggested that taro was cultivated in Kuk at that time. A number of staple food crops such as banana, sago, taro, greater yam, highland and lowland pitpits etc. were domesticated by the people of New Guinea area thousands of years ago [1]. PNG with one percent of world geographical land area inhabit 5% of the world’s biodiversity [2]. Traditionally, PNG farmers have a culture of actively sustaining this prolific biodiversity through their ago old agricultural practice [3]. In the 1884 colonial period formally started when most local economies depended almost entirely on the cultivation of staple crops as the basis of their livelihood. The crops included sweet potato, taro, yams and sago and these were supplemented with bananas, sugarcane etc. The shift to cultivation appears to have become the dominant means of acquiring food by 1880s [4]. But then, unlike many countries in Asia- Pacific region, Papua New Guinea did not change its food habit appreciably with the passing time. With the progress of development of human society, the new generation Papua New Guineans are showing ostensible preference for grain crop ‘rice’ as the staple food. Here is the relevance of finding suitable rice growing areas in Papua New Guinea in order to discover its inherent potential to transcend into a rice exporting country from a rice importing country. Crop-land suitability a...
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...utilisation of Natural Resources”.
[4] Laccey, R., (1981). Agricultural production on the eve of colonialism. In: D Denoon and C. Snowden (eds), A History of Agriculture in Papua New Guinea: A time to plant and a time to uproot. Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
[5] Perveen, F., Ryota, N., Imtiaz, U., and Hossain, K. M. D., (2007). “Crop land suitability analysis using a multicriteria evaluation and GIS approach, In: 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth”, pp. 1-8, The University of California, Berkeley, USA.
[6] Papua New Guinea Resource Information System - PNGRIS, (2009). The Land-Use Section, Science and Technology Branch, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, 3rd ed., P.O Box 1863, Boroko, NCD, Papua New Guinea.
[7] USDA (United State Department of Agriculture), Soil texture classification,http://soils.usda.gov
In the first chapter of the book the author discusses a brief world history and evolution of rice crops. It is interesting to see that even though parts of Africa had their own rice crop variety, the globalization of rice crop Oryza Sativa has been slowly replacing the African variety. The author also starts
The cultivation of rice has had an enormous impact on the natural biome. Rice has affected the natural biome that it is grown in, in a devastating way. It has caused the natural biomes to deteriorate and caused the natural way of life to collapse leaving no place for the native animals and plants. But what would happen if the cultivation of rice stopped and the natural biomes returned to their former glory? What would happen to all those people depending on rice for the next meal? Those who depend on rice to pay for and keep their families alive? This report looks at the where, effects, who and how of rice cultivation.
I first read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the Fall 2003 based on a recommendation from a friend. Many chapters of the book are truly fascinating, but I had criticisms of the book back then and hold even more now. Chief among these is the preponderance of analysis devoted to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to, say, an explanation of the greatly disparate levels of wealth and development among Eurasian nations. I will therefore attempt to confine this review on the "meat and potatoes" of his book: the dramatic Spanish conquest of the Incas; the impact of continental geography on food production; and finally, the origins of the Eurasian development of guns, germs, and steel. In terms of structure, I will first summarize the book's arguments, then critically assess the book's evidentiary base, and conclude with an analysis of how Guns, Germs, and Steel ultimately helps to address the wealth question.
Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips had not traveled west across the Atlantic. Some of the New World crops that hav...
2006 The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA. Thomson Wadworth.
Rice was another cash crop that required a substantial investment in land, labor, and equipment. It was among the most intensive and extensive crops developed in colonial North America. Its cultivation helped shape the development of societies in South...
In places like Papua New Guinea, where the climate is very wet and tropical, they can get crops like Sago. Sago is found in the center of Sago trees, the pulp of the tree. When a village is hungry, they chop down the tree, dig to the pulp, harvest for 2-4 days, then eat. Sago is low in calories and protein, and doesn’t last long, maybe 3-5 days at the most. In places like the Fertile Crescent, where the climate is very dry, they are able to grow crops, like wheat. The Fertile Crescent, they basically won the “Geographically lottery” by having the perfect weather for growing wheat. Wheat was high in calories and protein, easy to harvest, and could be kept for up to a year. By having an easy food to maintain, the Fertile Crescent were able to have more time on their hands, and that helped the civilization develop into using domesticated animals. While, Papua New Guinea were still in the hunter-gather
This quote also describes my first imergency into Malinowski’s ethnography, ‘’Argonauts of the western pacific.’’ It was uncharted waters, and I was left stranded on a beach of an unknown field with only my books to make for friends. This paper will give account of my thoughts as they appeared and evolved on several key issues through the book, concentrating on, what I deduced, to be of either paramount importance to the ‘’Malinowski experience’’ in the archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, or to be points of academic debate between me and the author and his work. Firstly, I will explore the position towards the ethnographer and his task in field work, giving account of Malinowski’s contribution to the field of social anthropology as well as providing some contrary opinion. Secondly, I will engage with the ‘’Primitive Economic Man’’ and Malinowski’s critic of him, leading to the depiction of the Kula and its ways, where I will look at how the author approached the system (and the structure) and how that approach had influenced his later observations and analysis. Finally I will look at the functionalists’ perspective on the local soci...
on tropical agricultural products, such as coffee and bananas and its climate and resources are
“The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.” (Arthur Keith)
Before the land of what we no class Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and other countries in the middle east grains, such as wheat and wild barley, could be seen growing in the wild without human hand to cultivate and nurture it (Authors 2007). Over time, humans began to recognize the benefit of the plants and began the first signs of human agriculture. The skill of farming took time and trial and error, but along the way, humans began to settle down to tend to their crops. Though the first crops were nothing more than seed s thrown about without rhyme or reason to the process we know today such as fields having, rows and sorting out the seeds to create a higher yield each harvest (Authors 2007). Because of the trial and error process, agriculture of plants did not take place of a short period but took many, many years to evolve to what we know today as agriculture; the new fa...
Palm oil is considered an essential ingredient for the production of foods and other products in which human use. Orangutan Project (2015) states that ‘palm oil is derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree’, and the ‘palm oil plantations are the main driver for deforestation in Indonesia’. The harvest of the palm trees for the production of palm oil affects the ecosystem as it can affect the environment. This investigation with highlight out the advantages of the palm fruit providing nutrients, it is essential for the productions of products, and this production being that palm oil can reduce poverty. The negatives of how the production of palm oil negatively affects the environment, the habitat of the animals, and social consequences
Agriculture is quite possibly the most important advancement and discovery that humanity has made. It produces the one thing that we need the most: food. It has been around since 9500 BC, and can be the oldest sign of mankind’s acumen and the development and evolving of our minds and creations. Agriculture has been mastered throughout hundreds of years and is one of our most important resources on Earth, along with water and fossil fuels. Although the older farming methods from ancient times seem somewhat mediocre and barbaric, they were very ingenious and advanced for that time period. Over thousands of years, we have improved the way agriculture is used, how land is cultivated, the various techniques of farming and irrigation, and the tools and mechanics used. Numerous things that we see as aboriginal today, such as using a hand plow, were extremely contemporary in ancient times, and played key roles in the development of man and society, since quick labor was not abundant before this time. We are now extremely advanced in agriculture and irrigation and the tools used to farm and grow and harvest crops. We have learned from our past and ancestors how to grow and evolve in our methods and have advanced forward greatly.
... Chapter 25: Origins of Food Production. Oxford University Press. University of California Davis. Pg 476, 482, 478, 479-480
A. Strathern and P. Stewart, ‘Seeking Personhood: Anthropological accounts and local concepts in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea.’ Oceania Vol. 68 No. 3. Oceania publications, Sydney, 1998.