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New Crops for Pacific Island Forestry (2006): EW07-004, New Crops for Pacific Island Forestry, Craig Elevitch, principal investigator, Permanent Agriculture Resources, P.O. Box 428, Holualoa, HI 96725, (808) 324-4427, SARE@agroforestry.net. Western SARE funding: $80,000. Attempts to introduce new food crops into the Pacific islands often fail, mainly because the crops are a poor fit with dietary or cultural preferences, they were not introduced for their suitability in indigenous mixed agroforestry systems and various market factors were poorly assessed. This Professional Development Program project hopes to counter such failures on a foundation of two beliefs: that ecological sustainability can best be maintained through diverse agroforestry systems and that economic viability of a new crop depends on product development for specific markets, on maximizing local value-added processing and on the suitability for available distribution systems. To accomplish its goals, the project will conduct a survey to determine crops suitable for introduction, it will develop "product sheets," four to eight pages long, for each of the 40 crops selected and it will disseminate the product sheets via the Internet as they are developed.
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