Rota farmers eye long-term crops to compete

[B]ROTA[/B]—Ahead of the pending military buildup on Guam and the increased demand for locally grown food many farmers expect it to spur, farmers here are working to carve a niche for themselves in the produce market by growing crops that take longer to raise than varieties grown on Tinian or Saipan, a strategy that could help their farms stay competitive in the years to come.

“That’s the only way we can get our agriculture up and going,” said Felix Calvo, a staff member with Northern Marianas College’s Cooperative Research Education and Extension Services program in an interview Tuesday at NMC’s Rota Campus. “We’re kind of positioning our farmers to get into staple crops.”

Saipan and Tinian have better access than Rota to markets where they can sell crops, thereby giving their farmers added incentive to raise vegetables they can harvest quickly, Calvo noted. While Rota’s farmers face some serious hardships getting their products off of the island, the marketing practices of their counterparts elsewhere in the CNMI, however, have opened up an opportunity for them to sell produce that requires more time in the ground before it can be plucked and brought to supermarket shelves, in particular the island’s celebrated sweet potatoes and its taro.

“We cannot compete with Saipan and Tinian if we grow the same things,” said Calvo. “We have a lot of the same conditions. We have the same labor laws. So instead, we’re trying to fill the demand for other supplies.”

Rota is already doing a brisk trade in a host of agriculture products that take longer periods to raise. According to statistics from the Department of Commerce branch here on the island, for example, Rota exported 3,477 pounds of white sweet potatoes to Guam in July 2008 alone and 2,601 pounds of red sweet potatoes. Meanwhile, exports of taro to Guam came in at 280 pounds for July.

Agricultural export levels might be higher on Rota, Calvo noted, were it not for the tricky task of getting produce off of the island. Cargo ships arrive only twice a month to Rota, he said, while the primary air cargo carrier between here and Guam, Freedom Air, has limited space available to farmers because of its agreement to transport mail for the local post office. Rota also lacks some of the key infrastructure it needs for farmers and ranchers to market their products, such as a slaughterhouse. Ranchers currently must sell their livestock alive rather than have it butchered to fetch a higher price.

To aid the efforts of Rota’s farmers, however, NMC CREES has begun a host of projects to test various strains of sweet potatoes, taro and other vegetable to determine which of them will grow best on the island. Moreover, the college last month held a taste test on the island to research whether any of the variety’s grown through the research is more appealing to customers, Calvo said.

Meanwhile, officials here have identified at least one major challenge to growers that they are now working to address, the presence of the Cuban slugs, an invasive species that can damage crops.

“They’re like locusts,” Calvo said of the species, uncovered roughly a year ago. Now, he added, local authorities are working to prevent the slugs from harming local farms and have tightened their inspections of imports to the island to block other invasive species like the Rhinoceros beetle, from reaching Rota.