AUCKLAND – Food and beverage exporters from the Pacific say one of the greatest challenges they face is having to constantly adapt to and overcome the effects of climate change.

Exporters from Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Niue, Tuvalu, Cook Islands and Palau were in New Zealand last week to learn more about breaking their products into a larger export market.

Marshall Islands boasts the only company in the world that produces pandanus juice, which is made 100 percent from the pandanus plant, and is fully organic.

Iva Reimers-Roberto, from Robert Reimers Enterprises, said they are looking to export the juice to New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

She says difficulties include freight costs and gaining international certification, but when it comes to planting the pandanus tree, climate change is especially a problem.

“That is one of the major hurdles. Basically, it’s erosion of our land, limited land area. And also when you take into consideration the out-migration of our people in the outer-islands, so obviously there’s going to be no one else to plant these products but we would like to involve everyone in the outer islands.”

The Managing director of Niue Vanilla International, Stanley Kalauni, saids they want to officially launch their organic vanilla bean products in New Zealand, but want to ensure they have the capacity to supply the market.

Kalauni says the crop is extremely labour intensive, and climate change does not make the job any easier.

“The weather have changed, weather patterns back home. For vanilla to thrive, you need a lot of rain, at the right place where they are actually grown or farmed.

“At the moment, over the last couple of months, or three months, we have a really, really dry spell, so the vines are actually suffering at the moment. We hope to get some serious rain in the next couple of weeks or so.”

Palau Aquaculture Cooperative Association is looking to set up a processing plant so they can begin exporting giant clam meat.

Its executive director, Bernice Ngirkelau, says to ensure climate change is not an obstacle, the country has had to improve their farming methods, like using a screen to cover the clam farms.

“We need the screen to protect the clams from overheating. We came up with another cage design that we can use in a deeper part of the ocean.

“So we usually place the farm in the shallow area, but since the weather is getting warmer and warmer, we now have moved the clams farms to a little deeper area of the ocean.”

The general manager of the Tuvalu Coconut Traders Cooperative, Pasivao Maani, says they have no choice but to continue to move forward in the face of climate change and natural disasters.

“Cyclone Pam really hit our place, and this is affecting our plantation like coconuts, taro, breadfruit as well, and we see that the government is working very hard in protecting our place so that this won’t happen, but this is natural disasters and we have to face it, but we still survive.”

While the group was in New Zealand last week they met with government biosecurity and customs departments, private sector importers and buyers as well as chefs and hospitality representatives.

- Dateline Pacific