by Dave Stone, Associate Dean of International Programs
I
n November, I had the opportunity to travel to American Samoa for the first time. This overlooked island is an unincorporated territory of the United States. Among other things, this means don’t forget to bring your passport to make it through immigration and customs. It’s a long way to have to fly back home. In fact, it takes longer to fly from Portland to Pago Pago than it is to Paris. On top of that, there are only two flights a week from Honolulu.
So, why did I spend all that time in an economy seat to get to American Samoa? To visit the most remote National Park in the U.S. system? No, but I did get to drive through part of it. To see the giant flying fox bats? No, but there were plenty of those and they’re really cool.
I was in American Samoa to deliver food safety education and engage with professionals and farmers from this small island. In 2023, the College of Agricultural Sciences was awarded the Pacific Food Safety Education and Training Collaborative, a multi-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With commited partners, we are focused on the needs of the Pacific Insular Areas (Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa), as well as the independent nations within the Compacts of Free Association (Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia).
Tropical islands can present unique challenges to food safety, security and resiliency. Beyond the obvious issues associated with distribution, they also struggle with shelf-life and spoilage, ability to scale production, access to equipment and testing facilities, potable water, invasive pests, weather disasters and frequent power failures. Often, there’s a lack of research on the best practices to grow, harvest and process traditional crops as well.
Oregon, a Pacific Rim state, shares many economic, ecological and personal connections with the vast neighborhood of the Pacific. Which brings me back to American Samoa, one of our distant neighbors. Fortunately, I had an excellent host during our visit, Ian Gurr. Ian is an Horticulture Researcher in the Division of Agriculture, Community and Natural Resources in American Samoa Community College. Traveling with me was Dr. Hailey Traini, Associate Professor in our College of Agricultural Sciences and Josh Bevan, Director of the Food Technology Center at the University of Idaho.
Collectively we brought expertise in pesticide safety, water sanitation, food safety and approaches to behavioral change. American Samoa was our second in-person workshop for the Collaborative. The first was held on the Big Island with colleagues from the University of Hawai‘i and the Western Regional Center to Enhance Food Safety, housed at OSU.
Future engagements are planned in 2025 with partners on the other side of the international dateline. The workshops were attended by local extension agents, farmers and cooperatives, school lunch programs, food entrepreneurs, and officials from local departments of health and agriculture. Beyond the workshops, the Collaborative also launched an online train-the-trainer series for over 50 participants across more than a dozen islands and five time zones. Our goal with this training is to build on-island capacity to recognize and respond to food safety issues using local knowledge and trusted sources.
This trip was a true wheels up and down experience, packed with meetings, farm visits and training. It’s the kind of work our faculty are doing every day in Oregon and throughout the world. While 72 hours is not enough time to really learn about a place and its culture, American Samoa’s people, agriculture and landscape made a deep impression on me. Honestly, this is my favorite part of global engagement: I went there to share my expertise and I returned with much more. And for that, I’m grateful.
– Dave Stone | Associate Dean of International Programs
This work is supported by a Food Safety Outreach Project grant (#2023-70020-40632) funded by the U.S. Department of Agricultural National Institute of Food & Agriculture.