Pacific Island Agriculture: The Contemporary Position in Western Samoa and Some Wider Implications

Abstract

T nHE postwar boom in agricultural prices for tropical products has not been accompanied by uniform effects in the various island groups of the South Pacific Ocean. While agricultural maladies are apparent and obvious in the Cook Islands, the prosperity of native-commercial and plantation agriculture in Fiji and Western Samoa is in striking contrast.' Within the extensive field of economic development, postwar programs in the Pacific Ocean area have been directed towards the increased productivity of the islands and the extension of the, hitherto, narrow agricultural base of the insular economies. During the last 20 years greater attention has been focussed on Western Samoa where, among the native people, there is a growing national consciousness, and an increasing impatience with existing social, political, and economic inequalities. Western Samoa has been exposed to European civilization for barely 100 years and Samoan society, socially and to a limited extent economically, has been able to absorb and modify the external influences to which it has been