Abstract
Object of culture and culture of a society, taro is more than a staple food on the West coast of Vanua Lava (Banks group, North Vanuatu). Farmers do not cultivate taro on irrigated terraces to live, but live to cultivate and eat taro every day. Taro holds the memory of the village, of the ancestors and of the place. This place, named taro pondfield, is described in this article from an ecological and social point of view. The main goal is to understand why the inhabitants of the West coast of Vanua Lava are producing so much taro. To achieve this, we will describe and analyse the pondfield’s history, geography, land transmission rules, ancestral savoir-faire, yield and the quantity of taro produced at the village scale. Despite a lower yield (7.10t dry matter/ha) compared to rivers (20.1t/ha) and marshes (10.2t/ha), cultivation in basins irrigated in alternation, unique to Vanuatu and in the Pacific, is the most socially valorized technique in the village. Today, the farmers not only continue to practice their ancestors’ savoir-faire, but also reclaim former abandoned taro pondfields; their frontiers are extended. The difference between the taro consumed (95.7t dry matter) and the taro produced each year (146.5t) leaves us to believe that a lot of taro is harvested in excess, which reinforces the “social generosity” characteristic of Melanesian societies. The taro pondfields of Vanua Lava offer a considerable food potential for the population of today and tomorrow.