Tonga farmer wins World Food Day Award
Entrepreneurial skills and product diversification led to success
Malia Guttenbeil was presented today with the FAO’s World Food Day Model Farmer Award for her success as an agriculture entrepreneur and leader of women’s handicraft groups.
Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, who presided over the annual event, presented the FAO’s annual Asia-Pacific award to Guttenbeil and three other farmers from Bhutan, the Philippines and Thailand. All received the awards for their outstanding achievements in agriculture and food production.
According to friends and family, Guttenbeil was more than a little surprised when she was named one of FAO’s Model Farmers, because she’s not one to boast of her accomplishments. While she has achieved much, and is a strong advocate for women, Guttenbeil maintains she is an extremely modest farmer.
Known as Tai to her neighbours on the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, Malia was not born into a farming family. As a young woman she was employed in a general store performing a variety of jobs. “I’m not that clever,” she insists. But it was that early experience in business that would help her later in life.
While working in the shop Guttenbeil met her husband. Initially, the couple expected to continue as shopkeepers, but in the mid-1980s, a relative alerted them to the opportunity of growing vanilla. Tonga has many farmers growing vanilla, but only the Vanilla Growers Association handled the processing of the beans for export. However, due to disagreements among its members, the association was about to dissolve.
Sensing an opportunity, a relative urged Guttenbeil and her husband to invest in a vanilla farm and start buying and processing vanilla from other farmers for export. The couple agreed and rented a small farm near the village of Vava’u and initially started growing their own vanilla. As their family grew, the couple and their sons began buying up all the vanilla they could from other farmers. Soon, through Guttenbeil’s entrepreneurial skills, the family was exporting tons of vanilla to New Zealand and Australia.
Vanilla is not a food staple, but income from vanilla has improved the food security of countless Tongan farming families. Pacific Island nations such as Tonga have limited resources, but by selling their vanilla for export, farmers have achieved higher incomes and supplemented their diets with imported food staples.
Having found success with vanilla processing and exports, the Guttenbeils expanded into kava, which is used for medicinal purposes in many countries. The results were similar: farming families received better incomes, boosting their food security.
Through her business connections, Guttenbeil realized that Tongans living overseas wanted to buy the hand-woven Tongan mats used as garments in traditional ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. She organized groups of housewives to weave the mats for sale and export, encouraging the women and showing them how to keep the quality of what they weave high. Through the sale of these mats, a significant number of women in Vava’u and other villages saw their incomes and family food security improve.
“Vava’u is a paradise,’’ Guttenbeil says. And through the opportunities she is providing for women, she is working to see that it stays that way.
The annual award ceremony is part of FAO’s Asia-Pacific 2013 observance of World Food Day, marking the 68th anniversary of the founding of FAO in Quebec City, Canada on 16 October 1945. The theme for this year’s World Food Day is Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition. This reflects the FAO concept that healthy people depend on healthy food systems. A food system is composed of the environment, people, institutions and processes by which agricultural products are produced, processed and delivered to consumers. Every aspect of the food system affects the final availability and accessibility of diverse, nutritious food and the ability of consumers to choose healthy diets.
In addition to HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, the World Food Day observance included a keynote address by Noeleen Heyzer, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, H.E. Yukol Limlamthong, other senior Thai government officials, Bangkok-based members of the diplomatic corps, representatives of UN Agencies and civil society organizations also attended. The observance included a welcome statement by Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Assistant Director-General for Asia and the Pacific, who said, “I am pleased to report that the latest FAO food insecurity figures show that the number of hungry people in the world is continuing to decline slowly; down this year from 868 million to 842 million. While this is good news, it still means one person in every eight is undernourished.”