Timothy Sharp | Curtin University (original) (raw)
Papers by Timothy Sharp
Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 2022
Open-air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua ... more Open-air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Over the past 60 years, rapid growth of urban populations, changes in global commodity prices, and the decline in value of the PNG currency have stimulated demand for domestic fresh food. Selling fresh food in marketplaces has also become an attractive way to earn money for rural producers, whose returns on labour on their export crops have declined, and for urban residents struggling to make a living. This in turn has led to significant changes in PNGʼs marketplaces: spatial and temporal changes, changes in what is bought and sold, changes in who is selling, and changes in how food is transacted. In this paper, we bring together research on PNGʼs marketplaces from between 1961 and 2022 to document these changes and their causes, alongside important continuities, and to examine the implications and substantial gaps in our knowledge.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2021
Trade in marketplaces is central to the domestic distribution of food and other goods throughout ... more Trade in marketplaces is central to the domestic distribution of food and other goods throughout the developing world. The commodity networks involved are often complex with numerous intermediate transactions between producer and consumer. By contrast, in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), marketplace trade has historically occurred through very short commodity networks. This article examines the appearance and growing significance of intermediary trading in PNG's marketplaces and associated trade networks. Reselling is supporting urban livelihoods at a time when making a living in town is increasingly precarious, but the transformation of marketplaces, I argue, also threatens to reduce the agency of rural producers and erode the incomes of certain producers. Growing intermediation may also see men increasingly involved in an economic domain where women have been central. The emergence of intermediaries is globally an important historical development, and this article provides a rare study of this process within the contemporary era. K E Y W O R D S commodity networks, intermediaries and middlemen, marketplace, Papua New Guinea, rural-urban relations, trade
The Journal of Development Studies, 2020
Within development projects, empowerment is often construed in narrow terms, and increasingly in ... more Within development projects, empowerment is often construed in narrow terms, and increasingly in relation to economic empowerment. Feminist scholars have recently argued the need to bring back a more encompassing view of empowerment, which pays greater attention to relationality and changes in consciousness. In this article, we focus on one aspect of relationality-women's relationships with men. Drawing on three case studies of women's business success in Papua New Guinea, we argue men are pivotal in supporting and undermining women's economic opportunities. Offering support to recent work on women's empowerment which emphasizes both women's relationships with men, and the specificity of contexts into account, our article contributes to current debates in gender and development.
Oceania, 2019
In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling i... more In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling in marketplaces than from any other source. PNG's marketplaces are critical for food security, and for the redistribution of wealth. They are also important meeting places where people gather to see friends, hear the latest news, attend court cases, play cards and be entertained. This introduction to this special issue on 'Marketplaces and Morality in Papua New Guinea' reviews the history of PNG marketplaces and their contemporary forms. It charts their transformation from introduced colonial spaces into dynamic Melanesian places, which, as places to buy, sell and socialise, have become pervasive institutions in the lives of both urban and rural Papua New Guineans, and places where people interact with both known and unknown others. From this, marketplaces emerge as important spaces of moral evaluation and contestation in relation to what constitutes morally acceptable exchange and what practices are acceptable in these places. The paper demonstrates that exchange in the marketplace should not be reduced to commodity transactions, and questions assumptions about the types of people marketplaces create. It argues that the country's marketplaces are productive sites to consider ideas of exchange, social relations and social personhood, and that there is a critical need to understand the concrete details of what takes place in contemporary marketplaces.
Oceania, 2019
The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea'... more The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea's marketplaces. Overt competition and haggling, once conspicuous by their near absence, are now commonplace in the country's betel nut marketplaces, and increasingly visible in many of the large urban fresh food marketplaces. This has emerged with the rise of long-distance and intermediary trading, and with increasing numbers of people dependent on trade for their livelihood. This paper explores moral economy, and the interactions and negotiations around price between lowland betel nut producers and highland wholesale traders as they occur in marketplaces and in rural production areas. It documents how the moral obligations that arise from trade itself, and entangled with self-interest, tempers competition and fosters solidarity amongst traders, redirects competition onto their interactions with producers, and in doing so reinforces existing power asymmetries.
The Melanesian World (eds. Hirsch and Rollason), 2019
The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, ... more The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, is considered the ‘green gold of the grassroots’. It is the country's most significant domestic cash crop and, in terms of rural incomes, a rival to the dominant export cash crops. Its sale is an important livelihood strategy in both rural and urban areas, the most visible manifestation of a flourishing informal economy. In betel nut marketplaces money ‘flows’ and ‘overflows’, traders wield large wads of cash, and vast sums change hands. Whether seeking their fortunes or only tinned fish, people trade betel nut first and foremost to make money, but such interests in trade do not automatically displace other forms of value. This paper is concerned with marketplaces and trade in contemporary Papua New Guinea and what is conveyed in those transactions between buyer and seller. Against the often impersonal and utilitarian rendering of trade, this paper seeks to foreground the sociability of trade and the multiple forms of value that may be simultaneously attached to monetised market transactions. This is not to conceal the discrete, unenduring, and competitive dynamics of trade, which prominently feature in many betel nut transactions, but instead to examine an important dynamic often overlooked. Market transactions, far from being asocial, or even socially destructive, have the capacity to generate and sustain diverse social relations including those of kinship and friendship.
State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Discussion Paper
In Papua New Guinea (PNG) marketplaces are central to the lives and livelihoods of both rural and... more In Papua New Guinea (PNG) marketplaces are central to the lives and livelihoods of both rural and urban people. But they are equally sites in which some people belong and others do not. In this paper I use PNG’s betel nut marketplaces as a case study to examine the processes of access and exclusion that characterise PNG’s marketplaces, and the everyday struggles for livelihoods and control that shape these spaces. While the state is part of this narrative – an ephemeral and occasionally violent presence – the focus is on those smaller struggles amongst local actors that determine who may trade and where. From this, marketplaces emerge not as public spaces, open to all, but as spaces of insecurity and enclosure. This, I argue, has important implications for the growing number of development interventions in marketplaces in the region.
Timothy L.M. Sharp (2013), Baias, Bisnis, and Betel Nut: The place of Traders in the Making of a ... more Timothy L.M. Sharp (2013), Baias, Bisnis, and Betel Nut: The place of Traders in the Making of a Melanesian Market, in Fiona Mccormack, Kate Barclay (ed.) Engaging with Capitalism: Cases from Oceania (Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 33) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.227 - 256
Purpose – This chapter examines the interactions among wholesale betel nut traders within Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) flourishing, contemporary, and indigenous betel nut trade. It explores the nature of the “social embeddedness” of the trade and how particular “place-based” practices and ideas shape people’s engagements with markets.Methodology/approach – Multisited ethnographic research focused on betel nut traders.Findings – This chapter highlights how local ideas about sociality and exchange shape the copresent rivalry and companionship that characterize interactions among Mt. Hagen’s betel nut traders. Traders travel long distances and take great risks to buy betel nut. They travel together, share resources, and trade in the same places, and through this they become part of one another’s social networks. This creates the expectation that traders will cooperate, consider other traders in their actions, contribute to each other’s safe-keeping, and act collectively in their interactions with producers. This does not preclude competition, however. Traders compete for profits, but the competiveness of their interactions is also influenced by a concern for status. This copresence of companionship and rivalry, which pervades Hagen sociality more broadly, is central to shaping the trade as a whole.Originality/value of the chapter – Betel nut is the most important domestic cash crop in PNG, and selling betel nut is a prominent livelihood activity for rural and urban people. This chapter reports some of the findings of the first detailed study of the betel nut trade in PNG.
Thesis Chapters by Timothy Sharp
This thesis is the first detailed geographic and ethnographic study of Papua New Guinea’s thrivin... more This thesis is the first detailed geographic and ethnographic study of Papua New Guinea’s thriving betel nut trade. It tells the story of the trade of betel nut into the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and examines the daily lives and interactions of the diverse collection of participants involved in the trade – the ‘betel people’ – and how they have contributed to the making of a flourishing, contemporary and indigenous market.
Betel nut is a stimulant that has long been produced, exchanged and consumed throughout lowland PNG, but was absent from the pre-colonial highlands. Since the 1960s increasing numbers of highlanders have started chewing betel nut which has given rise to a long-distance wholesale trade that connects rural lowland producers to the highland consumers. Betel nut is now the country’s most important domestic cash crop, and its sale and resale is a prominent, and potentially lucrative, livelihood activity for rural and urban people in both the lowlands and the highlands.
This thesis is based on thirteen months nomadic ethnographic fieldwork in which betel nut, and the actors that shape its trajectory, was followed from the lowland production areas into the highland marketplaces and beyond. I document the considerable scale and complexity of the trade, the efflorescence of intermediaries within it, and the high level of specialisation amongst its actors.
‘Following’ betel nut and betel people also foregrounds the importance of social relationships, and the associated processes of inclusion and exclusion, to shaping the structure and the dynamics of the trade. The highly competitive and opportunistic nature of the trade leads betel people to transact in the same places and often with the same people, and it encourages them to cultivate and nurture those relationships which provide security and enable access in new places. Betel people trade to make money, but I suggest that trade relationships regularly overflow the marketplace. Further, the transactions within the trade are routinely conceptualised as more than simple commodity transfers. I also seek to frame the trade in relation to the power asymmetries between different actors, and emphasise the diverse manifestations of cooperation and competition in trade negotiations.
Drawing on the growing literature within geography and anthropology concerned with the social embeddedness of ‘economic’ activity, this research emphasises that the making of markets is a dynamic and contested process, one that is always spatial, grounded in particular places. In doing so it contributes to better understanding marketplaces, livelihoods, and the creation of alternative modernities in contemporary PNG. The betel nut trade is full of contradictions and tensions, but also the aspirations of a great number of ‘grassroot’ Papua New Guineans.
Reports by Timothy Sharp
ACIAR Final Report, 2021
This project examined the factors explaining women’s low level of engagement in small-scale agric... more This project examined the factors explaining women’s low level of engagement in small-scale agricultural enterprises and identified key pathways facilitating women’s move into managing their own small-scale enterprises. The goal was to gain new knowledge to design strategies to assist women to increase their involvement in small-scale rural enterprises.
Rural women in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are keen to increase their cash incomes. Whilst research among smallholder households has demonstrated the important role of women in the production and sale of agricultural produce, few studies have focused on the opportunities or barriers to women engaging more strongly in the agricultural sector, especially as managers of small-scale agricultural enterprises. This project addressed these knowledge gaps by drawing on and building on previous ACIAR socio-economic studies (ASEM/2006/127; ASEM/2008/036; ASEM/2010/052; ASEM/2012/072; ASEM/2014/095) to develop a detailed understanding of the enabling factors contributing to the success of entrepreneurial women in the agricultural sector.
The main achievements and impacts of the project are:
• Successful trial and evaluation of the Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) model to develop rural women’s financial and business management skills. There are now eight VSLA groups established in PNG, two piloted under this project, four subsequently established by CARE and two established by Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) with CARE support. Women’s savings levels, access to credit, and rates of establishment or expansion of micro/small-scale enterprises all improved
• Better understanding of the role and effectiveness of gender-specific agricultural extension programs for improving women’s economic empowerment and participation in export cropping.
• Greater knowledge of the main socio-cultural and economic factors affecting women’s participation in agribusiness and the key processes and pathways that facilitate women’s involvement in agribusiness.
• Identification of new and emerging entrepreneurial opportunities and risks for women in fresh food trading as intermediaries and wholesalers with the growth in volume and complexity of domestic commodity markets.
• Capacity building of three PNG Early Career Researchers through postgraduate studies at Curtin University and Unitech, PNG.
• Completion of a range of scientific and industry publications.
• Enhanced collaboration between research institutions, private sector and NGOs in the coffee and oil palm industries to enable more collaborative and gender-inclusive approaches in agricultural extension.
Further information on the project and outputs can be accessed from the Pacific Livelihoods Research Group website: www.pacificlivelihoods.com
Pacific Livelihoods Research Group Report, 2022
This report provides an overview of the current nature of the domestic trade in dry coconuts and ... more This report provides an overview of the current nature of the domestic trade in dry coconuts and the importance of fresh food marketplaces to household livelihoods and food security in PNG. It documents findings from surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016 on the sale of coconuts at 16 local marketplaces in the cocoa/copra and oil palm producing areas in East New Britain (ENB), West New Britain (WNB) and Milne Bay (MB) Provinces. More broadly, the report examines the flexible and adaptive livelihoods of smallholder producers in PNG, in particular the integration of export cash cropping and the production of fresh food for local marketplaces within household livelihood strategies.
Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 2022
Open-air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua ... more Open-air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Over the past 60 years, rapid growth of urban populations, changes in global commodity prices, and the decline in value of the PNG currency have stimulated demand for domestic fresh food. Selling fresh food in marketplaces has also become an attractive way to earn money for rural producers, whose returns on labour on their export crops have declined, and for urban residents struggling to make a living. This in turn has led to significant changes in PNGʼs marketplaces: spatial and temporal changes, changes in what is bought and sold, changes in who is selling, and changes in how food is transacted. In this paper, we bring together research on PNGʼs marketplaces from between 1961 and 2022 to document these changes and their causes, alongside important continuities, and to examine the implications and substantial gaps in our knowledge.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2021
Trade in marketplaces is central to the domestic distribution of food and other goods throughout ... more Trade in marketplaces is central to the domestic distribution of food and other goods throughout the developing world. The commodity networks involved are often complex with numerous intermediate transactions between producer and consumer. By contrast, in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), marketplace trade has historically occurred through very short commodity networks. This article examines the appearance and growing significance of intermediary trading in PNG's marketplaces and associated trade networks. Reselling is supporting urban livelihoods at a time when making a living in town is increasingly precarious, but the transformation of marketplaces, I argue, also threatens to reduce the agency of rural producers and erode the incomes of certain producers. Growing intermediation may also see men increasingly involved in an economic domain where women have been central. The emergence of intermediaries is globally an important historical development, and this article provides a rare study of this process within the contemporary era. K E Y W O R D S commodity networks, intermediaries and middlemen, marketplace, Papua New Guinea, rural-urban relations, trade
The Journal of Development Studies, 2020
Within development projects, empowerment is often construed in narrow terms, and increasingly in ... more Within development projects, empowerment is often construed in narrow terms, and increasingly in relation to economic empowerment. Feminist scholars have recently argued the need to bring back a more encompassing view of empowerment, which pays greater attention to relationality and changes in consciousness. In this article, we focus on one aspect of relationality-women's relationships with men. Drawing on three case studies of women's business success in Papua New Guinea, we argue men are pivotal in supporting and undermining women's economic opportunities. Offering support to recent work on women's empowerment which emphasizes both women's relationships with men, and the specificity of contexts into account, our article contributes to current debates in gender and development.
Oceania, 2019
In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling i... more In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling in marketplaces than from any other source. PNG's marketplaces are critical for food security, and for the redistribution of wealth. They are also important meeting places where people gather to see friends, hear the latest news, attend court cases, play cards and be entertained. This introduction to this special issue on 'Marketplaces and Morality in Papua New Guinea' reviews the history of PNG marketplaces and their contemporary forms. It charts their transformation from introduced colonial spaces into dynamic Melanesian places, which, as places to buy, sell and socialise, have become pervasive institutions in the lives of both urban and rural Papua New Guineans, and places where people interact with both known and unknown others. From this, marketplaces emerge as important spaces of moral evaluation and contestation in relation to what constitutes morally acceptable exchange and what practices are acceptable in these places. The paper demonstrates that exchange in the marketplace should not be reduced to commodity transactions, and questions assumptions about the types of people marketplaces create. It argues that the country's marketplaces are productive sites to consider ideas of exchange, social relations and social personhood, and that there is a critical need to understand the concrete details of what takes place in contemporary marketplaces.
Oceania, 2019
The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea'... more The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea's marketplaces. Overt competition and haggling, once conspicuous by their near absence, are now commonplace in the country's betel nut marketplaces, and increasingly visible in many of the large urban fresh food marketplaces. This has emerged with the rise of long-distance and intermediary trading, and with increasing numbers of people dependent on trade for their livelihood. This paper explores moral economy, and the interactions and negotiations around price between lowland betel nut producers and highland wholesale traders as they occur in marketplaces and in rural production areas. It documents how the moral obligations that arise from trade itself, and entangled with self-interest, tempers competition and fosters solidarity amongst traders, redirects competition onto their interactions with producers, and in doing so reinforces existing power asymmetries.
The Melanesian World (eds. Hirsch and Rollason), 2019
The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, ... more The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, is considered the ‘green gold of the grassroots’. It is the country's most significant domestic cash crop and, in terms of rural incomes, a rival to the dominant export cash crops. Its sale is an important livelihood strategy in both rural and urban areas, the most visible manifestation of a flourishing informal economy. In betel nut marketplaces money ‘flows’ and ‘overflows’, traders wield large wads of cash, and vast sums change hands. Whether seeking their fortunes or only tinned fish, people trade betel nut first and foremost to make money, but such interests in trade do not automatically displace other forms of value. This paper is concerned with marketplaces and trade in contemporary Papua New Guinea and what is conveyed in those transactions between buyer and seller. Against the often impersonal and utilitarian rendering of trade, this paper seeks to foreground the sociability of trade and the multiple forms of value that may be simultaneously attached to monetised market transactions. This is not to conceal the discrete, unenduring, and competitive dynamics of trade, which prominently feature in many betel nut transactions, but instead to examine an important dynamic often overlooked. Market transactions, far from being asocial, or even socially destructive, have the capacity to generate and sustain diverse social relations including those of kinship and friendship.
State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Discussion Paper
In Papua New Guinea (PNG) marketplaces are central to the lives and livelihoods of both rural and... more In Papua New Guinea (PNG) marketplaces are central to the lives and livelihoods of both rural and urban people. But they are equally sites in which some people belong and others do not. In this paper I use PNG’s betel nut marketplaces as a case study to examine the processes of access and exclusion that characterise PNG’s marketplaces, and the everyday struggles for livelihoods and control that shape these spaces. While the state is part of this narrative – an ephemeral and occasionally violent presence – the focus is on those smaller struggles amongst local actors that determine who may trade and where. From this, marketplaces emerge not as public spaces, open to all, but as spaces of insecurity and enclosure. This, I argue, has important implications for the growing number of development interventions in marketplaces in the region.
Timothy L.M. Sharp (2013), Baias, Bisnis, and Betel Nut: The place of Traders in the Making of a ... more Timothy L.M. Sharp (2013), Baias, Bisnis, and Betel Nut: The place of Traders in the Making of a Melanesian Market, in Fiona Mccormack, Kate Barclay (ed.) Engaging with Capitalism: Cases from Oceania (Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 33) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.227 - 256
Purpose – This chapter examines the interactions among wholesale betel nut traders within Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) flourishing, contemporary, and indigenous betel nut trade. It explores the nature of the “social embeddedness” of the trade and how particular “place-based” practices and ideas shape people’s engagements with markets.Methodology/approach – Multisited ethnographic research focused on betel nut traders.Findings – This chapter highlights how local ideas about sociality and exchange shape the copresent rivalry and companionship that characterize interactions among Mt. Hagen’s betel nut traders. Traders travel long distances and take great risks to buy betel nut. They travel together, share resources, and trade in the same places, and through this they become part of one another’s social networks. This creates the expectation that traders will cooperate, consider other traders in their actions, contribute to each other’s safe-keeping, and act collectively in their interactions with producers. This does not preclude competition, however. Traders compete for profits, but the competiveness of their interactions is also influenced by a concern for status. This copresence of companionship and rivalry, which pervades Hagen sociality more broadly, is central to shaping the trade as a whole.Originality/value of the chapter – Betel nut is the most important domestic cash crop in PNG, and selling betel nut is a prominent livelihood activity for rural and urban people. This chapter reports some of the findings of the first detailed study of the betel nut trade in PNG.
This thesis is the first detailed geographic and ethnographic study of Papua New Guinea’s thrivin... more This thesis is the first detailed geographic and ethnographic study of Papua New Guinea’s thriving betel nut trade. It tells the story of the trade of betel nut into the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and examines the daily lives and interactions of the diverse collection of participants involved in the trade – the ‘betel people’ – and how they have contributed to the making of a flourishing, contemporary and indigenous market.
Betel nut is a stimulant that has long been produced, exchanged and consumed throughout lowland PNG, but was absent from the pre-colonial highlands. Since the 1960s increasing numbers of highlanders have started chewing betel nut which has given rise to a long-distance wholesale trade that connects rural lowland producers to the highland consumers. Betel nut is now the country’s most important domestic cash crop, and its sale and resale is a prominent, and potentially lucrative, livelihood activity for rural and urban people in both the lowlands and the highlands.
This thesis is based on thirteen months nomadic ethnographic fieldwork in which betel nut, and the actors that shape its trajectory, was followed from the lowland production areas into the highland marketplaces and beyond. I document the considerable scale and complexity of the trade, the efflorescence of intermediaries within it, and the high level of specialisation amongst its actors.
‘Following’ betel nut and betel people also foregrounds the importance of social relationships, and the associated processes of inclusion and exclusion, to shaping the structure and the dynamics of the trade. The highly competitive and opportunistic nature of the trade leads betel people to transact in the same places and often with the same people, and it encourages them to cultivate and nurture those relationships which provide security and enable access in new places. Betel people trade to make money, but I suggest that trade relationships regularly overflow the marketplace. Further, the transactions within the trade are routinely conceptualised as more than simple commodity transfers. I also seek to frame the trade in relation to the power asymmetries between different actors, and emphasise the diverse manifestations of cooperation and competition in trade negotiations.
Drawing on the growing literature within geography and anthropology concerned with the social embeddedness of ‘economic’ activity, this research emphasises that the making of markets is a dynamic and contested process, one that is always spatial, grounded in particular places. In doing so it contributes to better understanding marketplaces, livelihoods, and the creation of alternative modernities in contemporary PNG. The betel nut trade is full of contradictions and tensions, but also the aspirations of a great number of ‘grassroot’ Papua New Guineans.
ACIAR Final Report, 2021
This project examined the factors explaining women’s low level of engagement in small-scale agric... more This project examined the factors explaining women’s low level of engagement in small-scale agricultural enterprises and identified key pathways facilitating women’s move into managing their own small-scale enterprises. The goal was to gain new knowledge to design strategies to assist women to increase their involvement in small-scale rural enterprises.
Rural women in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are keen to increase their cash incomes. Whilst research among smallholder households has demonstrated the important role of women in the production and sale of agricultural produce, few studies have focused on the opportunities or barriers to women engaging more strongly in the agricultural sector, especially as managers of small-scale agricultural enterprises. This project addressed these knowledge gaps by drawing on and building on previous ACIAR socio-economic studies (ASEM/2006/127; ASEM/2008/036; ASEM/2010/052; ASEM/2012/072; ASEM/2014/095) to develop a detailed understanding of the enabling factors contributing to the success of entrepreneurial women in the agricultural sector.
The main achievements and impacts of the project are:
• Successful trial and evaluation of the Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) model to develop rural women’s financial and business management skills. There are now eight VSLA groups established in PNG, two piloted under this project, four subsequently established by CARE and two established by Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) with CARE support. Women’s savings levels, access to credit, and rates of establishment or expansion of micro/small-scale enterprises all improved
• Better understanding of the role and effectiveness of gender-specific agricultural extension programs for improving women’s economic empowerment and participation in export cropping.
• Greater knowledge of the main socio-cultural and economic factors affecting women’s participation in agribusiness and the key processes and pathways that facilitate women’s involvement in agribusiness.
• Identification of new and emerging entrepreneurial opportunities and risks for women in fresh food trading as intermediaries and wholesalers with the growth in volume and complexity of domestic commodity markets.
• Capacity building of three PNG Early Career Researchers through postgraduate studies at Curtin University and Unitech, PNG.
• Completion of a range of scientific and industry publications.
• Enhanced collaboration between research institutions, private sector and NGOs in the coffee and oil palm industries to enable more collaborative and gender-inclusive approaches in agricultural extension.
Further information on the project and outputs can be accessed from the Pacific Livelihoods Research Group website: www.pacificlivelihoods.com
Pacific Livelihoods Research Group Report, 2022
This report provides an overview of the current nature of the domestic trade in dry coconuts and ... more This report provides an overview of the current nature of the domestic trade in dry coconuts and the importance of fresh food marketplaces to household livelihoods and food security in PNG. It documents findings from surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016 on the sale of coconuts at 16 local marketplaces in the cocoa/copra and oil palm producing areas in East New Britain (ENB), West New Britain (WNB) and Milne Bay (MB) Provinces. More broadly, the report examines the flexible and adaptive livelihoods of smallholder producers in PNG, in particular the integration of export cash cropping and the production of fresh food for local marketplaces within household livelihood strategies.