Nuts about the future?

credit: Susie Emmett

New market opportunities for two nuts from the South Pacific may make good the decline of a third, the coconut. Copra prices have long been disappointing to countries such as Vanuatu but this chain of islands in the Pacific is home to both the hardest and the softest nuts in the world. Even the nut with the softest centre is a hard nut to crack: known as Nangai (Canarium indicum), its husk is so hard that it requires a particular technique to open. At sunset, beachside villages echo with the characteristic cracks and thumps of nangai being opened, as first the tough outer husk is chopped away, and then the prepared fruit is held upright on a flat stone before hitting it with a heavy rounded pebble. Only then is the soft sweet flesh revealed and scooped out.

Demand for this nut with its delicate sweet taste outstrips supply. So much so that last season one group of farmers chartered a plane to get a tonne of their nuts to a local distributor, Charles Longwah, earning them US $5000. Returns such as this have encouraged some farmers to plant more nangai but others are discouraged by the work required to nurture the tree for five years and then harvest and prepare the nut. Longwah is confident that the international market for nangai will take off in the next five years but he warns that Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are gearing up their production so Vanuatu will lose out on the soft nut market unless it gets planting.

Learning from the internet

Vanuatu has already achieved some international success with a nut at the other end of the hardness spectrum, the seed of the natangura palm. The leaves of natangura (Metroxylon warburgii), have long been used as thatch but a chance discovery on the internet by a local development organization, the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific (FSP), inspired them to recognize new potential in the natangura nut. They discovered that in South America the nut of the tagoa palm is used for carving into beautiful objects, so a skilled wood carver from Paama, one of Vanuatu's smallest islands, was given the challenge of developing a new craft using natangura nuts.

Four years later, the carver, Jonah Tirimari is involved in training more and more carvers. The nut is as hard as stone, he says, and the carvers produce animal figures, jewelry and napkin rings for export. "We are also looking at producing parts for musical instruments such as the Scottish bagpipes," says Blake Dinkin, the Canadian volunteer, who is helping to develop the business, Island Palm Products. The small, round tough kernel can also substitute for ivory, carved into the highly collectable figures or 'natsuke' coveted by Asian collectors.

Dealers in Japan have asked Vanuatu to export many thousands of natangura seeds a month, but, so far, the answer has been 'No'. "Why should we export seeds worth 40-50 cents" asks Blake Dinkin, "when we have the skills here to transform them into something worth ten times more?"

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