Land registration not the way to go!

From ANTHONY FLYNN

Wau

Morobe Province

  

By promoting land registration our leaders are now advocating a return to the pre-independence days of expatriate development. Village land is to be registered and our leaders will find developers. 

This is quite clear from the Prime minister’s comments on the front page of a newspaper.  

Our leaders have now acknowledged their collective failure to produce efficient small farmers throughout Papua New Guinea.

It can be readily understood that agricultural development and profits do not come in a few years; the economic life of the present young generation will be over by the time that the land should be returned.

I have grave doubts that the land will ever be returned to the people under a later regime.  

Corruption appears to be the order of the day now.

Corruption will remain and can only be worse when these land registration deals mature.

With many other citizens, my experience is that Lands Department, with other departments, is corrupt.

It is now 35 years after independence; Papua New Guinea is full of villagers and villages that are all consumers of services and producing little.

 This is a country of unsustainable slash and burn gardens.

There are very few developed farms to be handed on to sons.

 We should be developing many, more independent, stable farming communities.

Almost everything relating to agriculture depends largely on the necessary input of expatriates.

When there are no produce exporters, there is no export income; no feed mill, no chicken business; no flourmill, no bread; no importers, no tools, etc.

 In the early 1960’s I enjoyed fresh milk and cream from Jersey cows in the Trobriands; fresh milk, cream and cheese at the Lutheran missions throughout the Highlands.

I helped a missionary to make bacon near Kundiawa.

Are these things beyond the ability of the people of today?

The stable farming system where these activities can develop has never been promoted.

New tools, yes; new crops, yes; stable farming system, no!