Counting on trendy to revive traditional drink
BEFORE kava makes its way to a new wave of trendy bars in places like New York’s borough if Brooklyn and Berkeley, California, it must be nurtured and plucked by people like Livai Tavesivesi.
A sun-weathered farmer on the Fijian island of Ovalau, Tavesivesi, 47, once farmed kava – the main ingredient in a drink long used by residents to attain a mellow buzz – much the way people in Fiji have done for centuries. First, he washed its gnarled roots in a nearby river. Then he diced them, dried them in the sun and pounded them into powder with a tabili, a supersize mortar and pestle. Finally, he carried it 5 kilometres into town to be sold.
“If we didn’t have a horse or car, we had to carry it,” he said.
Those traditional ways have led to bigger problems. Last year, Cyclone Winston devastated the island’s crop, threatening the livelihoods of farmers even as it sent kava prices soaring. More broadly, Fiji’s kava harvests have been inconsistent for several years because of outdated techniques; the casual attitude of small-time farming has led to poor-quality products that do not pack the same pop.
Pacific Island governments, nongovernmental organisations and a new group of entrepreneurs are trying to solve those problems. They are working to modernise kava cultivation in the hope that the drink’s budding popularity in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world can be sustained. Groups in Fiji hope new interest could help alleviate the country’s rural poverty, which persists despite healthy economic growth overall.
A new hope
“Kava,” said Rob ErskineSmith, an Australian associate professor who works with a nonprofit group that supports kava farmers, “is the biggest opportunity Fiji has.”
More than 15 years ago, sales of kava generated about $200 million a year for the South Pacific region. The market took a hit after Germany banned the product in 2002 over worries about liver toxicity. The United States issued a similar warning but never banned kava. Then a German court in 2015 overturned that country’s ban, leading to hopes that the market would open again.
There are about 100 US kava bars now, up from about onethird of that in 2012, said Tyler Blythe, a founding board member of the American Kava Association.
“A lot of these guys own one or two bars, and they are expanding,” he said.
In nations like Fiji and Vanuatu, kava, a species of pepper, has long been part of a nightly ritual. On late afternoons, young Fijians in villages take turns pounding the kava, known locally as yaqona, with a tabili. The powder is wrapped in cloth and sloshed around a communal bowl full of water, creating a muddy liquid with a bitter, chalky taste. The payoff: a feeling of relaxed contentedness that Fijians say aids discussion and conflict resolution.
Changing farmers’ ways
Kava can take three to five years to grow, which leaves the crop vulnerable to storms. Farmers can prune leaves of the kava plant during cyclone season to reduce wind damage, but this is not widely practised. Some unscrupulous farmers have been known to mix their kava with fillers.
Taki Mai, a Fijian company, wants to do with kava what others have done for exotic coffee. It sells kava powder for the traditional brew and flavoured shots for Western taste buds.
But its business depends largely on getting local farmers to change their ways to ensure high-quality kava.
“We need to be prepared as an industry this time,” said Zane Yoshida, who began Taki Mai in 2014 as an answer to energy drinks. “There is no third chance.”
Production rates are all over the map. Fiji’s kava exports totaled $4.3 million in 2015, according to government statistics, but the cyclone last year has left Taki Mai’s $600,000 processing factory idle. Local kava prices recently doubled to about $18 a pound.