By Nanai Laveitiga Tuiletufuga

Prisoners at Tafaigata should consider vanilla farming as a career after serving time.

The recommendation to include farming as a rehabilitational incentive for inmates while in custody was made by the Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi during the Cabinet Development Committee discussion this week of a position paper to relocate the Tafaigata Prison to Tanumalala.

“Vanilla farming remains unexplored and yet it promises a lot of money if its full export potential is realized,�? said Tuilaepa.

“And I know for a fact that a lot of our prisoners are skillful farmers.

“Equipping them with the knowhow and skills to take up vanilla farming will offer them a new source of income once they leave prison.�?

While vanilla farming exists in Samoa, the Prime Minister noted that it is relatively small because farmers are not aware of the money making opportunities.

“Farmers have little or no awareness at all that there is a lucrative vanilla export market waiting to be exploited.�?

According to the Prime Minister experts have reassured him that when harvested, a half a bucket of processed vanilla can earn the same amount of money from seven tons of dried copra.

And the marketing and export opportunities are endless, he added.

To attract the farmers’ interest to grow and export vanilla, the Prime Minister said that government is taking the lead and using its resources to initiate a vanilla plantation.

Presently, the Samoa Trust Estate Corporation, (STEC) and Ministry of Agriculture’s Nu’u Research Division are working together to develop vanilla as Samoa’s next agricultural export.
The plan is for STEC to set aside ten acres of lands at Mulifanua for a vanilla plantation.

STEC will also provide the labour force while the Nu’u scientists will search for a bee specy to pollinate the vanilla plants to reach their full harvesting potentials.

Vanilla plants are manually pollinated by hand because the bee species needed for nature to take its course is not found in Samoa.

Said the Prime Minister;

“We need the right kind of bee if the vanilla plantation is going to produce the results we want.

“We have lands, the perfect climate and our will to develop vanilla as a new export commodity for our farmers.�?

“Vanilla is a relatively new product to Samoa but is one that suits Samoa’s climate and soils.

“Encouraging prisoners to take up vanilla farming is the best way for the inmates to become assets and not liabilities to the families and communities once they leave prison.�?

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