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Specialty Crop Profiles

These crops support:

  • commercial and non-commercial plantings of all sizes, including homegardens
  • small-scale commercial operations suitable for family farms and gardens
  • local food production for happier and healthier communities
  • traditional crops
  • integrating trees and crops (agroforestry)
  • community food self-reliance.

Bamboo—Specialty Crop Profile

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Written by Andrew Benton, Lex A.J. Thomson, Peter Berg, and Susan Ruskin | 28 December 2011

Bamboo can provide food, fodder, medicine, and a multitude of building and craft materials.
Bamboo can provide food, fodder, medicine, and a multitude of building and craft materials.

Bamboo has a range of benefits that make it excellent for developing small-scale productive enterprises. It is widely used throughout the Pacific for temporary building structures, rafts, harvesting poles, fishing rods, food and water containers, food tongs, and handicrafts. Bamboo species are most often harvested from the wild, such as secondary forests in Melanesia. In Hawai‘i, wild bamboo stands are commonly harvested for fishing poles, edible shoots, and some construction applications, as well as for some craft work and kadomatsu. It is little used for food except to small extent by Southeast Asian immigrants. 

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Kava ('awa)—Specialty Crop Profile

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Written by Scot C. Nelson | 28 November 2011

Kawa ('awa in Hawaiian) is a traditional ceremonial beverage in many parts of the Pacific, with commercial potential.
Kawa ('awa in Hawaiian) is a traditional ceremonial beverage in many parts of the Pacific, with commercial potential.

A traditional beverage made from the roots and stump of the kava plant is the most important kava product. This medicinal, psychoactive, and ceremonial drink is an aqueous suspension of phytochemicals called kavalactones and other components. Aerial portions of the plant should never be used in beverage preparations; consumption of photosynthetic tissues may pose a human health hazard.

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Coffee—Specialty Crop Profile

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Written by Virginia Easton Smith, Shawn Steiman, and Craig Elevitch | 27 April 2011

Shade grown Kona coffee.
Shade grown Kona coffee berries.

The coffee seed, referred to as “bean,” is processed, roasted and brewed for beverages. The roasted beans and brewed coffee are also used in candies, desserts and savory dishes. Many uses for the fruit, seed, and by-products can be found. The fruit pulp can be dried and used to make tea, which contains caffeine and antioxidants. The fruit pulp is high in nitrogen and potassium and is used, fresh or composted, for fertilizer and to add organic matter to the soil. The parchment skins also add organic matter and are used as mulch in coffee orchards and around other plants.

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Black Pepper—Specialty Crop Profile

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Written by Scot C. Nelson and K. T. Cannon-Eger | 25 March 2011

Black pepper vine and berries.
Black pepper vine and berries.
Aside from salt, pepper is the world’s most important and valued spice. It is used as an important component of many recipes and to flavor foods. From the berries of Piper nigrum are produced several condiments: black pepper, white pepper, green pepper, and “Tellicherry” pepper. Many grades of these peppers are recognized in the spice trade.

 

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Banana and Plantain—Specialty Crop Profile

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Written by Jeff Daniells, Lois Englberger, and Adelino Lorens | 25 February 2011

Young bananas forming (variety 'Chinese').
Young bananas forming (variety 'Chinese'). Bananas (plantains included) are the world’s fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize.
Global consumption of banana and plantain is about one trillion individual fruit each year. They are either consumed raw when ripe or cooked when hard, green, mature or at various stages of ripeness and represent one of the most significant sources of food energy in the Pacific. Banana leaves are commonly used as table mats and plates. They are also used for wrapping some foods before or after cooking. Banana blossom, also called bud or bell, is consumed as a cooked vegetable dish. The pseudostem (or “trunk”) is also used throughout the Pacific to line traditional above- and below-ground ovens together with banana leaves placed over the food to keep it dirt-free. Fibres are extracted from the stems and leaves and used for various purposes. There are many medicinal uses that are important for banana. The fibre of the pseudostems and the juice of the stem are used in various treatments, such as for concussion, muscle ache, broken bones, cuts, burns, and fevers. Eating banana can also be used to clear fish bones that are caught in the throat.

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