Over sixty stakeholders, farmers, exporters, government, and civil society representatives from across kava-producing countries in the Pacific including Samoa attended the hybrid Regional Kava Validation Workshop in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

SPC Value Chains Specialist, Sanfred Smith said the conference marked a pivotal stride forward in endorsing the provisions of the regional strategy, ensuring the Pacific's priorities are comprehensively and meaningfully integrated.

“This strategy is designed to unlock opportunities in value addition, investment, sustainable production, capacity-building, market access, and support to farmers and the private sector,” he said.

“We will discuss the protection of kava as a GI at regional, national, and international levels, and explore its opportunities and challenges. Together, we will craft a practical five-year implementation roadmap.”

Over the three days, there were vigorous discussions on addressing challenges and identifying collaborative opportunities to support the regional strategy.

Pacific Island Forum’s Setaita Tupua said more can be done as a collective in the region in the kava sector by supporting research and innovation across the kava supply chain.

She said a collective effort is needed, “where value addition is prioritised, and more importantly, operationalised. This will help ensure our smallholder farmers including women and other marginalised communities can profit from their hard-earned efforts over the minimum three-year cultivation period.”

She said the strategy was pivotal to addressing age-old challenges of access to finance, access to export markets, and ease of access roads to production and farming sites.

“It is critically important these challenges are dealt with, so that quality control and traceability issues are mitigated and effectively addressed,” she said.