Workshop highlights kava's economic potentia Featured
Workshop participants at traditional kava circle
25 April, 2017. A Tongan kava supplier and distributor in New Zealand says kava's potential was still hugely underdeveloped and more can be done to package the crop creatively for a wide range of consumers and markets.
Kava Haus Limited director, Koloa Hau, said the root crop is a gift to the Pacific region because that is where the crop grows best.
He said the crop has economic potential beyond traditional ceremonies and kava bars.
Mr Hau said Pacific people laughed at him when he first developed micronized kava, where the crop's coarse fibres are removed to leave a smooth texture and taste.
"I see the people outside of the community and one of the things we kind of need to talk about is to see the potential of kava outside of the kava bowl. Huge potential. But because we don't see the potential, there are other people outside of the Pacific who are developing innovative products and we are absolutely missing out."
Mr Hau said he knew of overseas companies trying to develop innovative products made from kava, but it would be much better for Pacific people to develop their own ones first.
He said some of the new products proving popular included new sweets and drinks.
"We also have micronised flavoured kava that comes in berry, vanilla, cappuccino and cocoa. We also have cocoa dark chocolate and we also have a vegan kava chocolate. We even have a kava kava root tea, 100 percent kava that comes in a teabag, unbleached."
Kava's reputation took a hit from research which led to a ban on kava products in Europe in 2002 that was subsequently overturned.
However, Pacific academics said that in a bid to remove poisonous elements of the crop, kava had been stripped of all its beneficial and raw qualities while being made into a largely synthetic chemical product.
Now kava producing countries are focusing more on exporting high quality strains of kava.
Tongan academic and scholar, Dr Okusitino Mahina said many indigenous communities have consumed kava for centuries, with no untoward effects.
He says more in-depth research is needed.
"The whole kava issue has been compounded in multiple ways and we need to distinguish between different layers and how they come together to constitute different pros and cons in connection with kava."
Post-doctoral researcher, Apo Aporosa, said more youth were interested in kava now.
"Fiji for instance, where I am from, when I am speaking to a lot of people from home is that a lot of young people there who were formally sitting around and not doing a lot, but now they can see economic advantage in the price of kava considering it is like FJ$100 a kilo, whereas a couple of years ago it was a fraction of that."
Koloa Hau urged support for Pacific markets and growers to manufacture new kava products to the world.
He also hoped that an institute focusing on kava research could be established.
-RNZI
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The one-day kava workshop was organised by Dr Apo Aporosa of the University of Waikato and doctoral scholars and researchers Daniel Henandez and Zbigniew Dumienski of the University of Auckland and Edmond Fehoko of Auckland University of Technology and held at the University of Waikato at Hamilton in Aotearoa New Zealand on Friday 21 April, 2017.
A dominant drain of thought reflected upon was necessarily the need to adopt a total rather than a partial approach to the matter of kava. This was reflected in the multiplicity of truly complex but exciting and worthwhile issues across the physical, psychological and social which were made up of a variety of well researched and documented papers presented by academics, practitioners and consumers of kava.
Another common sentiment was the expressed need for coordination over fragmentation of research, involving the rigorous raising of problems and not the uncritical presentation of solutions, where real solutions to actual problems can be found. This is in view of the ongoing largely subjectively manufactured controversies hanging over kava, as in the health issues relating to its multipurpose consumption amidst many others.
The highlighting of the economic potential of kava was also a subject matter of some critical discussion. As far as this potentiality goes, a way out for the Moana Pacific would be to rise above the subsistence production for local customary consumption to upscale production with a sense of creativity and innovation for global consumption. This will certainly make kava a truly competitive local Moana Pacific product.
The need for in-depth research involving kava in its multifarious dimensions -- not to mention it being a real product of huge economic significance -- is a partnership between Moana Pacific and other interested academics -- such as the workshop organisers as leading researchers in the field -- and Moana Pacific governments -- all for a unified purpose and the common good of all!