Bugweb rebuilding livelihood with water cress farming


The Climate Smart Agriculture project is fully supported by ACIAR with the main objective, of finding meaningful ways to enable vulnerable communities become resilient and improves agricultural production from negative effect of climate change.

In 2015, a devastating flood washed away coffee trees in Bugweb village in the Rural Buang LLG of Bulolo district. Coffee is one of their main source of income. The locals responded by farming water cress, a fast way of making good income to revive and sustain their livelihoods.

Farming of water cress is done by building stone walls in a plot-like style and skilfully diverting water into their water cress plots.

This traditional style of irrigation is a display of resilience to continue surviving by locals in Bugweb towards the negative effect of climate change like flooding.

Bugweb’s stone-wall water cress farming and irrigation was discovered by a team comprising of officers from NARI and Goroka University’s Centre for Social and Creative Media while working on an ACIAR-funded, Climate Smart Agriculture Project by video documenting a traditional irrigation systems with farmers on taro and water cress in Patep 2 village, across the bordering mountain range.

Farming water cress can fetch between K150 to K300 to sustain their living expenses from school fees, uniforms, church work, basic household needs and cultural responsibilities.

Ward 6 Councilor of Bugweb, William Sale expressed that 99 households participate in this water cress farming, and involves males and females from harvesting, sorting, bundling and packing. Each bundle of water cress is sold from K1 to K1.50.

Apart from water cress, orange, when in season, provides additional income including dried seeds of pumpkin, amaranth (aupa), cucumber, and corn.

The community of Bugweb expressed that farming water cress is a fast way of earning income and by sharing their story, will enable other areas with similar resources to be resilient and sustainable during natural disasters.

Apart from water cress, yam and the red pandanus fruit is a staple in Bugweb.

Patep 2 village is another area that uses traditional irrigation since the 1950s to grow taro and water cress. If you happen to come across a farmer who is selling fresh water cress at the Lae Main Market, be sure to ask where it was farmed.

A short video featuring water cress farming in Bugweb will be developed along and later released with other farmer videos by NARI and UoG’s CSCM over the life of the CSA project.

The CSA project ends in March, 2025.

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