Yap Summit Community Sector - Yap State Government

YAP STATE GOVERNMENT
Figure 18 The Role of Consumers Choices in the Economy
As Cameron (1991) highlighted in a FAO study on Food Security in the FSM, “an imported food item is
qualitatively essential if it contains a nutritional component that cannot be obtained within the local
environment at any price … [or] prices are too high … to afford”.
Food security is another lens through which the contradiction of “self-reliance” in Yap can be examined. In the
Report to the US Congress on the “First 5 years Review of the Compact of Free Association with the Federated
States of Micronesia (2010)” the US Department of Interior defines as “economically self-sufficient” an economy
that “produces goods and services in sufficient quantities to meet the demands of the population.” What is not
clear in this definition is whether the “goods” mentioned are “essential goods” as highlighted by Cameroon (1991)
or goods pushed into the local economy by a “Cargo Cult”. In fact, there is no poverty in Yap, if poverty is defined
as insufficient access to food. In Yap the “severity of poverty” target that measures the first Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) defining Poverty, Hardship and Hunger is only 1.7 (Millennium Development Goals &
The Federated States of Micronesia, Status Report 2010). What is curious is that despite the fact that subsistence
agriculture is practiced by every family on the island the food poverty line for Yap is set at 6,394 USD per day
(Millennium Development Goals & The Federated States of Micronesia, Status Report 2010). It is therefore
reasonable to suggest that the food poverty line as set actually includes imported food that was defined through
the “Cargo Cult” as “essential”, despite the complete availability of nutritional goods on the island. In this respect it
is worth highlighting how the high “vulnerability” of Small Island States is due to, within other factors, a high
“dependence on strategic imports” (Briguglio, 1995). What should be taken under consideration is the extended
definition of “strategic imports” that aid dynamics constructed over time. Food and beverages represent the best
sample in this respect, and they are within the highest components of household expenditures according to the
Consumer Price Index (CPI). In fact in 2010, of the total basket of items attributed to Yapese households that was
weighted as being 18.5% of the total FSM purchases (100%), food was set as being 4.8%, beverages 1.9%, and
apart from fuel which was weighted 0.8%, all the other commodities were below 0.3% (FSM SBOC, 2011). Soft
drinks, alcohol and tuna cans are within the main items imported and sold by local retail businesses (DOI and
Pacific Island Training Initiative, 2010). All of these items have local substitutes, namely coconut water, tuba and
fresh tuna. Not only do all these items have a local substitute, but each family has access to these products
through land, which makes them affordable to anyone in economic terms, while equivalent imported items
undermine the extent of the impact on the local economy of retail businesses: if the items sold would be local
products, the impact of the retail business on the Yapese economy would be greater.
44 | P a g e