When the Bougainville Copper Mine closed in 1989, Augustine Vailing left his welding apprentice job and return home to Ulagunan Village just outside of Kokopo, East New Britain.
He then spent 30 years working in PNG and the Solomon Islands, running his own welding shop, and working for PNG Water Board among other jobs, before finally working at the Lihir Islands gold mine.
On his holiday breaks from Lihir, Augustine would collect pineapple suckers growing wild in the bushes and plant them in the family garden.
“I used to encourage my family members to grow pineapple. It was not a common crop in Kokopo at the time but I knew there would be market for it someday,” he said.
At that time, pineapple was not grown on a large scale in East New Britain and most people were only familiar with copra and cocoa blocks.
“My family members didn’t know why I was doing this but just complied as instructed,” he said.
Augustine planted pineapple from 2007 to 2017 and his wife Rosina sold them at the main market in Kokopo. Over time she saw it doing wonders for her family and because pineapple cultivation is non-seasonal, Rosina was able to harvest and sell every week.
“I saw heaps of vegetables supplied to mines where I used to work and was thinking to myself that I could do this if I had a farm.”
By 2016, Augustine said his former employer Lihir Mining Company, through their catering services, began buying direct from his farm.
“Previously they would buy our pineapple from the main Kokopo market but when they learnt that we were a major supplier at the market, they came directly to the farm,” he said.
Self-taught pineapple farmer
Despite having little knowledge about farming, Augustine made a name for himself as a self-taught pineapple farmer and now supplies his produce to major buyers in the NGI region.
“We have been supplying Andersons since 2016 and while others do copra and cocoa, we do pineapple. To me it’s like free money because when growing pineapple, there is less labor compared to copra which has a lot of work involved,” he said.
The Valilings now supply in bulk to Lihir Mine and Andersons Supermarkets on a weekly basis, selling at K4 per kilo on average and earning a reasonable income for their family.
Augustine has now retired and is farming full time with his wife Rosina and their five children, some of whom are in school funded by their pineapple business.
He also has a truck named Nil-Nil Juice, which does pineapple runs to Kokopo in the morning and PMV runs afterwards.
Augustine is also widely known in Kokopo as the “Nil Nil Man” for his passion and consistency in growing and supplying pineapple to East New Britain over the past 10 years.
“After spending most of my life in the mines, I have now gone back to the land which has kept me and my family going for the past decade,” Augustine says.
FPDA support
After attending training provided by the FPDA branch in Kokopo, Augustine has expanded his farm to new locations covering well over 20,000 plants. He is also supplying seedlings to others who have land and have shown interest in the crop.
“If you want to mean business with pineapple, you have to grow up to 20,000 plants so you are able to constantly supply the market,” he said.
When FPDA officers visited the farm, they discovered that although Augustine was supplying pineapples in bulk to major buyers, he did not have a registered business to easily enable his business transactions.
The Valilings were assured that FPDA would assist them with skills training in bookkeeping and e-commerce, and help them register a business name.
This would help them manage their income, and also open doors for the family to seek assistance from the government, banks and other sources for expansion.
FPDA has so far assisted the Vailings with chemicals, knapsack spray pumps and skills training.
FPDA also provides market sourcing, farm management, and value chain and advisory support to farmers across the country.
