A local farmer from the highlands of Guadalcanal has finally received payment for his hard work.
Mr. Warren Mane comes from Haliatu village. Recently he received SBD$38,000 from two bags of kava chips plus kava roots.
“This money could not have come at a better time. It will go towards my children’s school fees and to support my family at this time of covid crisis. We have been struggling and money was hard to get by. This is a huge blessing for me and my family”, Mane says.
He says he started his Kava Garden in early April 2018. At that time he only had less than 100 kava nursery stock plants, which he collected from people in his village.
"We continued until we reached 150 stock nursery plants before we started planting”.
Mane says along the way they sought assistance from the Agriculture department in the Guadalcanal provincial office.
He says he had received some kava training and also received tools from the Guadalcanal agriculture office.
“Now I am thinking of extending my Kava garden to 3000 plants and looking forward to employing some people in my community to work on my farm”, Mane says.
Mane is said to be the first kava farm in Guadalcanal province to sell high quality grade Kava chips to Solomon local exporter/buyer Kubo Holding Ltd.