Workshop Focuses on Making Money With Food

By Amy Levendusky

Three exciting days of workshops for individuals wanting to start their own business and business owners looking to expand their food product line were invited to attend a series of food processing workshops held in Kolonia on the 10th, 11th, and 13th of October. These workshops were sponsored by the Island Food Community of Pohnpei (IFCP), which brought in a consultant, Dr. Richard Beyer, food scientist based in Fiji, to share his wealth of knowledge and experience on the subject of food processing. Dr. Beyer visited Pohnpei from October 3rd through October 16th.

While in Pohnpei, Dr. Beyer visited government officials to discuss how the government could support local entrepreneurs in the food processing industry. Dr. Beyer also met with local entrepreneurs on an individual basis to assist them in developing and marketing new products using local foods. "Everything that can be bought in your supermarkets, we can make using your own local foods and we can do all this at a low cost", Dr. Beyer explained in his workshops.

Dr. Beyer emphasized that we should not have to rely on imported goods when all the food we need is right here in front of us. The topics of food handling, food safety, product development, recipe formulations, marketing, and making a profit were all covered in the workshops.

Delicious, new products using local foods were made during the course of these workshops including breadfruit tuna patties, breadfruit cheese patties, lime (karertik) marmalade, banana syrup, pickled cucumbers, and fried snacks in an assortment of fun shapes made out of giant swamp taro (mwahng) and breadfruit. The workshops were held at Condon Hall and at the Mercedes Hall with an average of 25 people in attendance each day.

At the end of the workshop, participants decided which products they were going to work on developing over the next few months. They also requested to meet once a month with IFCP while they are developing their food products in case there is a need for further assistance. Dr. Beyer plans to return to Pohnpei if there is significant progress made by individuals or local businesses in the processing and selling at a profit of local food products.

IFCP would especially like to thank Dr. Beyer for visiting Pohnpei and working with members of the community to promote local food processing. Special thanks also go out to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for funding Dr. Beyer's consultancy. We would also like to thank all the people who participated in the food processing workshops and to all others who worked with Dr. Beyer during his stay on Pohnpei.