Houma community hosts Agricultural Awards to its smallholders – noted for best national yam yield

15 Dec Houma community hosts Agricultural Awards to its smallholders – noted for best national yam yield

2023/04/13 – The Houma community is nestled in the Western District of Tonga. The community is steeped in rich history and is home to one of the greatest natural attractions in Tonga – the Blow Holes known to the locals as the Pupu’a Puhi or Mapu-‘a-Vaea that stretches at least 4 miles.

Houma community is a hereditary estate held by the noble Vaea and has been known by many names such as the Funga maho e fā. Houma being one of the largest communities on the Western side and has farms along the coastline and further inland.

“Words are not enough to say thank you”, Mr Semisi Naitoko Vuna, Houma community Town Officer says.

“The disaster damaged all the plantations in Houma, save for the cassava that showed new growth. Everything else including yams were wiped out.”

The fast response and assistance to tax allotments allowed for farmers to provide food at what may have been a disastrous time soon after according to the Town Officer.

“The programme allowed for more people who had no land to farm to join in the cluster groups to farm for their families.” Mr Semisi Vuna explains.

“It is a huge blessing for us to have our lands ploughed which is the hard part and the rest fell into place and it helped us start planting as soon as possible.”

Most farmers do not own tractors to help with land preparation, very few can afford services as they are very expensive. The land preparation services are vital to farmers to being planting soon as possible. The alternative is manually loosening the dirt from weed which can take weeks and often times sets a farmer back and can miss a very crucial window in planting phase.

He believes that the early start gave the farmers of Houma the recognition of having the best early yams (tokamu’a) of this harvest season. Without the assistance the Town Officer is not confident they would have reached these heights of agricultural productivity and excellence.

Another issue Houma plantations along the coastline suffer annually from is sea spray, which worsens as storm surges occur. The sea spray destroys crops and decreases soil productivity affecting agricultural output of farmers. Part of the solution has been providing kauri timber trees as windbreakers that began as a small intervention.

“The Kauri timber trees provided is planted along plantations close to the ocean where it is vulnerable to sea spray. The barrier will be very useful in the long term.”

He also shares the benefits that Houma has seen as far as vegetable gardens that are led by the women. Where more Houma households are now able to eat vegetables, they otherwise wouldn’t have eaten because of price hikes.

The Town Officer says about 80% of gardens are damaged by roaming livestock especially those located closer to the community. The fencing provided by PIRAS to both home garden and plantations have safeguarded their yields.

The ‘inasi is the Tongan fist harvest where the cream of the crop are chosen and often gifted to special guests. This is still practiced where harvests are shared first with the most vulnerable of the communities. Mr Semisi Vuna explains that the ‘inasi for the church and the vulnerable people such as the elderly, people with disabilities, widows of Houma is always first priority amongst the farmers and women alike.