West Papua needs to develop its agriculture

by Charles Roring in Manokwari of West Papua - Indonesia

One of the visitors of my blog visited me this morning. His name is Jay Hersker. He is from Hawaii. I am personally quite familiar with the word Hawaii. It is where the University of Manoa is located. That campus has department of naval architecture where students from around the world go there to study off-shore engineering supported by ADB and East West Center.

Jay Hersker has been travelling across South East Asia for years. He went to Thailand, Malaysia and now he is in Indonesia. In his opinion, Thailand's development of agriculture is impressive. Thai people can export their surplus of fruit and rice to many countries. In their traditional markets, there are various kinds of fruits sold by vendors.

I and my friend Sylvester Saimar talked with him about sago and varieties of palm trees which are endemic in West Papua. Jay said that he wants to visit Papua University to see their Herbarium. The university also publishes a journal called Beccariana. Although this island has a good agriculture educational institution like Unipa, the agricultural development in West Papua is far from being advanced. More works need to be done to develop the agricultural sector of West Papua.