1. Introduction
Papua New Guinea (PNG), like other developing countries in the 1950s and 1960s,
established land settlement schemes (LSSs) to promote agricultural and economic
development. The LSSs were an attempt to shift settlers from a dependence on
subsistence production to a reliance on export cash crop income where smallholder
households would become intensive agriculturalists working their own land. Notimagined were the population and economic pressures and broader societal changes that
would emerge over time on the LSSs. In the highly regulated oil palm LSSs with
individual leases over fixed areas of land, settlers’ options for agricultural change have
been limited.
This paper explores how oil palm smallholders on the LSSs maintain agricultural
production, household economic security and social stability in the context of
population growth, limited opportunities for land-use change and fluctuating commodity
prices. Drawing on fieldwork conducted as part of a socio-economic study among oil
palm smallholders in West New Britain Province (WNB), PNG, we emphasise the
agricultural and non-agricultural responses to the various pressures and opportunities
present in smallholders’ everyday lives and highlight the extent to which smallholder
livelihoods are increasingly reliant on a range of income sources. The diversification of
livelihood strategies occurring on the LSSs together with the associated changes in
household structures and social relations is a major socio-agronomic transformation that
has implications for smallholder extension policies and rural development more
generally. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of this rural
transformation.