When we were colonized, we tend to believe the foods
coming in from outside is much better than our traditional food.
And because of that mentality, a lot of our people feel like
our traditional foods or vegetables or fruits and nuts
are not as good for hotels and resorts.
My name is Votausi Mackenzie-Reur, and my passion is promoting
and use of traditional foods.
My aha moment came when I was studying in Australia,
that was a long time ago.
When I was studying in Australia and we were doing international cookery
and I was asked if I could showcase
one of my Vanuatu cuisine dishes.
And I struggled.
That was the time when I was determined that not this is not good enough.
It was too early for people to accept what I wanted to do
when I started the cafe in 1999.
I had this beautiful menu
and then to my realization, my people do not want to come to town
to eat local food.
They come to eat fish and chips and buy cokes and blah, blah, blah.
And I ended up with just expatriates coming to my cafe.
That was hard for me.
But that taught me we need to market this.
I cannot do it alone and the government also has to come in.
So what I did was I focus on value adding.
I did some nuts, and then I dried fruits,
and then I went and did chutneys and jams, and all these different products .
And then from that, I took my products and go to hotels and resorts
and tell them this is something that you can use for this.
So that was the beginning of trying to introduce
all these local products into their menus.
My name's Cherise Addinsall
I'm a social researcher
for the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research,
and I've been working with that organization now for 10 years
in Fiji and Vanuatu.
Vanuatu was actually listed by the World
Bank as the seventh most dependent country in the world on tourism,
so over 40 percent of its GDP. Very concentrated
in areas though it wasn't distributed throughout Vanuatu.
And where those concentrated areas are is where we saw
the most impact on culture, environment.
It was getting to the stage when a lot of our people
the last 40 years, they were so dependent on tourism,
and once the tourists stopped coming, they did not know what to do.
So I think at this point in time, what we want to do is we want our own people
to decide on what kind of tourism they want for their country.
COVID is said in hindsight is a really good thing for us,
because we stop and we stocktake of our lives and see where our lives is heading.
What COVID has done is
people return to the land to cope without the income,
and we have jumped on that and it's it's really
given us that momentum to change this story.
So we're developing what we call agritourism
experiences. Agritourism is not a niche form of tourism here
it's actually a sustainable management strategy
and it speaks to the core values of the people here.
Which is land, custom culture, food and community.
With this new agritourism strategy, definitely it is a new direction.
We have 30 ambassadors that we're working with now
and what we wanted them to do is to go back to their businesses
and to try to link it to agriculture, to their land.
So that if agriculture can become their main source of income,
when the borders are open, when they have visitors
to their properties, to their farm, then that is the icing on the cake.
But don't use it as your main income!
Because tourism is so volatile when anything happens
you continue your life.
We also have a good business that is running and that is operating,
that is gaining income from the domestic market,
because we cannot underestimate our domestic market.
We've got agritourism operators that are actually practicing their tours
on school groups or government staff or local tourists.
So, you know, there's a
there's a whole market here of people that want to go explore their own country.
Now, they've got a bit more time, they want to go see things.
Yesterday we had a demonstration on the use of the local produce.
People think, wow, it's so tedious, you have to spend so much time
cooking this up.
We try to come up with some new innovative
ways of preparing a new modern kitchen and using local foods.
My name is Leonid Vusilai
But everywhere in Vanuatu, everyone calls Leo now. He is our winner
for the first season for Pacific Island Food Revolution.
We made it up there because we brought our food culture with us.
So every episode of the cooking competition,
we tried to tell a story of our culture through a plate.
So with this plate, the plate, and then we try to talk about
how it was used back then, traditionally.
But then we added our twist to it.
That has a lot of effect on people looking at that, that, wow,
you know, this is great. I can do that, too.
I didn't realize that my food can be that nice.
We are so proud of him and we're so happy to have him on board
in promoting this revival of our foods.
Every food that we grow in our garden has some meaning to it.
We have our special dishes for a different ceremony for the whole life
cycle from from the mother is pregnant, from when the mother is lactating,
from when the child is born, and then the high school kids
during initiation of boys, and during menstruation.
So the whole cycle of life, we have all these different foods that is grown.
It is really diverse.
It has so much story and tradition behind it.
When the borders are open, we want international tourists
to see Vanuatu as a traditional food, cuisine and culture destination,
that they will be able to come to Vanuatu to experience
the natural organic foods that we have, which is unique and authentic.
And I think this is something
that we've been missing out on on the last 40 years.
This is my dream.
and I know that it's going to work.