A Social Enterprise: Mountain Honey
Sweetening the lives of rural people across Papua New Guinea.
Honey production in Papua New Guinea reached its peak in the 1980’s. At one point, Papua New Guinean Honey was considered to be the best in the world, the ultimate accolade. The heart of honey production then was in Goroka, with its pristine climate of perpetual spring and rich vegetation it was the ideal location.
As a kid, growing up,honey was the sugar alternative that we used daily in the household, to this day, I have warm childhood memories centered around servings of honey for breakfast on hot scones and slices of bread. Towards the mid and late nineties Honey production began to dwindle and by the turn of the millennium it had all but soared and production of honey depleted. Numerous factors saw the decline of the industry.
In this piece I am going to write about the how a local company, Mountain Honey among other honey producers are slowly but steadily trying to build the Honey industry by the locals, and how today honey is bringing sweetness back into the lives of people in spite of the economic woes.
I first heard of Kelly Inae and Mountain Honey in 2014,when I undertook a course in apiculture run by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock . My interest in this was I was looking at the idea of high earning agricultural commodities such as honey and spices.
My impression was that Kelly’s manner of doing things was unconventional, largely cause he hired his own carpenter to make the hive boxes which are usually bought ready made from New Zealand. As I asked people in the industry about the quality of such boxes many doubted and were even skeptical of his ways.
Mountain Honey, is a banner for the micro social enterprise in Papua New Guinea.
Like most micro SME’s it is a family run enterprise with Kelly and his wife who hand in hand are trying to change the communities that Mountain Honey operates in through addressing social issues in its own ways.
The wife is in charge of administration and packaging whilst Kelly does the business daily operations, which is runs training, extension services and of course does alot of public relations. They also have employed 3 staff members who are responsible for building boxes and support extension services.
One of the programs Mountain Honey does is through its farmers credit scheme,Mountain Honey is helping farmers build permanent houses.
Once the house is complete and if the farmer wants to remarry, he cannot remove the first wife and kids from the house. This is clearly articulated through an agreement the farmer makes with Mountain Honey.
Most farmers upon the return of their yield and new found wealth also try to show their wealth through acquisition of a wife, disowning their previous wife and sometimes the children. This safeguards the interest of the first wife from being homeless and cashless by providing security.
When a farmer purchases a box, farmers are then trained and 24 hour extension services is available. Farmers can then get boxes via credit from Mountain Honey, and a follow up of the farmer is made. However, the scale of operation which Kelly envisions is larger than what he can cope with as more people enlist as farmers.
I asked Kelly of the honey boxes he was producing locally and he said that , there's nothing special about the boxes from New Zealand, we could replicate these boxes here and create employees. There's nothing special about the wood it's only softwood.
So all it was, was someone proposing a local solution.
Another offshoot of Mountain Honey, is the Goroka Natural Habitat (Gonaha). Kelly conceived the idea in 2006 and came into realization in 2014 to compliment honey. Over the years, he managed to slowly buy land and expand the plot.
The front part of the habitat was used for the small scale production of Mountain honey also used for training, a packaging house and and a shed and where there's a carpenter constantly building hive boxes for farmers.. The rest of the three hectare is a lush habitat spread across a galley encompassing a growing number of flora, fauna, bird life and bug life. Through Kelly's extensive travel through Papua New Guinea he has collected nearly 300 endemic flora species and has planted at Gonoha Park, of course most of the plants have colourful stories of his adventures.
Kelly and his wife dream that one day this place can be a snapshot of the rich biodiversity that is existent in Papua New Guinea.
In the end, the apiculture community in Goroka was too small for us not to have met, when I did, Kelly is an unassuming man with a larger than life character, with a selfless heart.
As I spent nearly the whole day with Kelly and his wife it was hard not to appreciate the great effort that they exerted for the various projects within the park: the eco friendly houses were in the process of being constructed, the food garden consisting purely of traditional vegetables, the mini seed bank consisting of traditional vegetable seeds, the animal habitats, the hive boxes and the chicken coup.
From time to time, the Gonaha Park has volunteer tourist from all parts of the world offering various skill sets that would enrich the conservation project. Currently serving is a Belgian national, who is an ecologist, helping with the animal habitats. Volunteer tourists is a fairly new concept in PNG.
Talking to Kelly I realise that he has an out of the box attitude, hosting all these volunteers has planted seeds in him, ideas that are changing his world and slowly our rural communities. He says our lives must be as big as the hollywood movies we watch.
The park is open to outside visitors at a cost of K10 per head, K20 per head if they would like a traditional meal of food cooked in bamboo included.The area can be booked out for events launching etc.
Kelly's positive attitude towards the resurgence of PNG honey often seen as a colossal feat seems like a molehill. Its not to say he lives in a rosy coloured hill, rather his understanding of social issues and the social responsibility of his business illustrate why farmers gravitate towards partnerships with his business, Mountain Honey.
After all, businesses do not operate in a vacuum rather around people and their issues.
A good news story!