Picture: Sera Tuva in her vanilla nursery.
Fiji’s first demo vanilla nursery
is easing life’s hardships for a women’s group in Tailevu.
This is after the Group set a
target to buy and install flush toilets in each of their ten-members homes.
El-Shaddai Women’s Group Secretary,
Mrs Sera Tuva, 55, explained in i-taukei
the vanilla nursery was first trialed with them in 2013 at Naitutu Village,
Waidalice, Tailevu.
The Ministry of Agriculture
provided the building materials for the greenhouse and 77 vanilla plants to
begin their nursery, she said, to which they are truly grateful.
Vanilla takes three years’ to
fully mature. The Group calculated they would harvest in 2016.
She said when 2016 came around,
they found that it was not a good harvest. They found that vanilla grown
outside of the greenhouse, thrived more compared to the ones they grew.
Sera said vanilla was sensitive
to climatic changes and believed that was the reason they did not get a good
harvest.
She explained that while there
was not a consistent market for vanilla for them, buyers who had come to them
bought at $500 and $700/a kilo.
However, Sera said despite the
not-so-good harvest the Group continued to rake in money from the vanilla vines
that were also marketable. The vines are sold at $2 each for a metre-long in
length.
In 2018 and 2019, the Group
managed to harvest though still not to what they expected, but it was enough to
start the ball rolling to achieve their goal, a need – buy and install flush
toilets in each of their members’ homes. A basic need that many of us living in
the urban and peri-urban areas tend to forget.
She said the Group always met the
orders they received whether it was for 5,000 or 10,000 vines and this had a
significant impact on the individual families of their members. It was how they
managed to successfully pull off the project of installing flush toilets last
year.
Each of the women in the Group
have their own flower gardens at home, which also assists in improving their
livelihoods such as taking care of the education of their children, she said.
The Group plans to move into
planting anthuriams. The challenge is finding the time to maintain the upkeep
of the current nursery as living in a village means there are communal
obligations to be met first.
However, Sera is optimistic that
God will lead the way for the Group.
In commemorating International
Women’s Day, her advice to women was nothing was impossible if God lead the
way. She said women were not only helpers to provide food on the table; today,
women could also bring in the money to put food on the table.
She encouraged women to make use
of the space outside their homes, similar to what she had done. There is not a
space available around her home; these are taken up by her flowers, and her
vegetables.
El-Shaddai Women’s Group was
assisted under the Ministry of Agriculture’s Women in Agriculture capital
programme to assist women entrepreneur to start or expand their cottage
industries. Government allocated $150k this current financial year. The
programme supports women and women’s group for active participation in
Agriculture Development through the; commercializing floriculture for cut
flowers and green foliage production and establishment of nurseries; and
strengthening traditional art through commercializing Voivoi and Masi
production.
-ENDS-