On 1 December 2021, Australia launched a pilot program for the commercial importation of kava from the Pacific islands, joining a modest global boom in trade in this iconic Pacific product.
As Pacific Trade Invest Australia declared in their invitation to a webinar to launch the initiative – with the vague but politically correct hyperbole characteristic of this medium – “across much of the Blue Pacific, kava is woven into the very fabric of cultural life, connecting people, communities, and the past to the present”. It is also becoming a significant part of the economic survival of rural areas.
Following the progressive lifting, from 2008 onwards, of a 2002 European ban on the import of kava from the Pacific islands, and with increasing interest in North America in kava as a ‘natural’, plant-based treatment for anxiety, Pacific producers – especially Fiji – have achieved rising exports of this product. Despite some concerns about incomplete data, the Pacific Community (SPC) recently reported that annual exports of kava from Fiji had risen from around 2,000 tonnes in 2011 to over 12,000 tonnes in 2019.
