LOCAL HUMAN-SWEET POTATO-PIG SYSTEMS CHARACTERIZATION AND RESEARCH IN IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA With Limited Reference to Papua New Guinea A Secondary Literature Review

This report is a review of some of the English-language literature relevant to understanding, and improving, the sweet potato-pig systems primarily in the Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya Province, Indonesia. While there is a substantial body of literature on both sweet potatoes and pigs for the island of New Guinea, most of the literature deals with either sweet potatoes or with pigs separately, and much of the literature is based specifically on research conducted in Papua New Guinea. There is a gap in addressing the integrated nature of the sweet potato-pig livelihood systems, particularly those present in Irian Jaya. This review is an attempt to bring together the research literature on these two components of agriculture and animal husbandry in the lives of the native peoples of Irian Jaya. In order to enhance overall understanding, a considerable number of reports and publications from work in Papua New Guinea have been included. One of the important considerations of this review is to highlight the implications for research to be undertaken by the International Potato Center (CIP) and its partner institutions and individuals under the project entitled Poverty Alleviation and Food Security through Improving the Archeological and paleontological evidence suggests people have lived in the New Guinea highlands for as many as 30,000 years. Furthermore, they have practiced agriculture for about 2,000 years, raised and bred pigs from Asia for at least 1,000 years, but cultivated sweet potatoes from South America for only the past 300 years or so. A picture emerges in this century of indigenous peoples with Stone Age implements almost exclusively cultivating a single crop-sweet potatoes-and raising a singular animal-pigs. The former constitutes the staple diet of both humans and pigs, while the latter constitutes the basis and currency of complex social exchange networks. Some of the most interesting and useful information in English about humans, sweet potatoes and pigs in present-day Irian Jaya is contained in various anthropological and geographical publications dating from the 1960s. While this fascinating body of literature provides a solid, yet diverse, data baseline for understanding the socio-cultural, political, bio-physical and agro-pastoral contexts, the past 40 years has witnessed profound and considerable changes in these contexts. Therefore, some if not much of what is reported in the earlier literature may no longer accurately describe the present-day situation. Bureaucratic governmental administration, transmigration from other Indonesian provinces, Islamic and Christian religions, new crops and livestock, and …