“They will never live without yams.”
In Papua New Guinea (PNG), yams are an ancient companion. The first humans to arrive on the island of New Guinea brought them along when they arrived from Asia about 50,000 years ago, and they’ve been embedded in culture ever since.
Variously called greater yam, Dioscorea alata, yam tru in Tok Pisin—the English creole spoken throughout PNG—, and a host of other names in the country’s 839 languages, the tubers grow quickly in the volcanic soil. On Managalas Plateau, in the forested foothills of Oro Province, they’re called ninuri in the east and manang in the west. There—as I learned when I visited the Plateau in September of 2024—yam cultivation is a process deeply linked to identity and power.
“For the people of Managalas, planting a yam garden is an initiation process that is passed down from our elders,” says Crispin Burava, a community empowerment officer for the Managalas Conservation Foundation (MCF), the local organisation managing the vast new Managalas Conservation Area (MCA). “They will never live without yams.”
A long-lasting and nutritious staple food, yams play a particular and crucial role in community celebrations and resource exchange. “When it comes to ceremonial feasting, reconciliation of conflicts, and cultural obligations for things like bride price, there has to be yams,” says Managalas community member Bradley Dabadaba.
The practice is strictly gendered: only men are permitted to plant yams, though women play significant roles in the cultivation process, such as weeding and harvesting. Men that harvest especially large yams are rewarded with status within their communities. “When you harvest huge yams in your garden, you will be regarded as some kind of important person in the society,” says Nehemiah Gaboe, a business development officer for the province’s Ijivitari District.
It’s no surprise that the crop is associated with virility—aside from their phallic appearance, the vegetables are tangible proof of a person’s ability to provide. Their capacity to confer power goes deeper, too. “In the past, a man’s ability to grow a large yam was assumed to relate not just to physical hard work, but also to his ability to influence the non-physical world,” says the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) scientist and PNG program manager Will Unsworth, who is helping community organisations on the Plateau to draft a management plan for the conservation area.
“It was a way to prove himself as a physically and spiritually powerful person and as such as someone worth listening to when it was time for the clan to make important decisions, such as on land, marriages, trade, war, etc. So, the yams are more than food and ‘value’, but represent possession of traditional knowledge, which confers eligibility for respect when it comes to decision making.”
So, when a man shows up at a feast or ceremony with a massive yam, “he feels really proud,” says Reckson Kajiaki, who manages the Community Based Organisation (CBO) in one of the Plateau’s ten zones.
Digging up a giant one doesn’t usually happen by chance. “To get to these sizes, it’s a lot of work,” says Kajiaki. First, people clear the trees and shrubs from a defined area—to maintain soil fertility, they tend to cycle their crops through different areas of secondary forest, allowing each plot to replenish before it’s farmed again. Primary forest is not usually targeted, but as the Plateau’s population continues to expand, there could be more pressure to do so—one reason why the development of the management plan is urgently important.
Clearing bush is a job for the whole family, says Alking Fufus, who leads the Managalas Kuaefienami Theatre Group. “They all go together—the men do the cutting, the women clear the ground, and the children climb up into the trees to get the branches down,” he says. “When there is no help from family members or other interested people, you will have to sweat by yourself until the whole garden is completed.”
Once the earth is exposed, the men dig deep holes into the soil with long spades or sticks, refill them with soft soil or palm fronds, and plant their seed yams (small tubers that sprout into new plants)—carefully selected from the largest-growing plants in the previous year’s crop—in the holes.
Timing is important. Yams need to be planted near the end of the dry season—August to November—and may require watering if the rains are delayed. Harvesting then takes place after the end of the wet season—March to July. Malchus Kajia, who chairs the Managalas Conservation Foundation, describes how according to traditional knowledge, the tubers grow best if there are big thunderstorms during the wet season after the yams are planted, as the thunderclaps cause the seed yams to “jump out of their skins” and start growing roots.
After the first shoots appear, the men cut sticks to mark their places. “And then as soon as the weeds grow, the women play their role in weeding that garden,” says Dabadaba. Men also revisit the garden regularly to ensure the yam has space to grow. “When it’s growing, you need to keep digging around it so the soil is soft enough for the yam to grow longer and expand wider,” says Kajiaki.
There are particular place-based practices to carry out, too. Some people harvest the leaves of plants growing around a sacred spring and place them around the yam plants—“it’s like a magic power to make the yam grow,” says Kajiaki. Some will steep the bark of a local tree in water for several months, and then pour it on the crop. Others employ the protective powers of a certain kind of root: “Some people do come and destroy [other people’s yam crops] in order to not make another person’s yam grow big, so they use it there to protect them,” says Fufus.
A month after my trip to Managalas, when I’m back home in New Zealand, a photo pops up on my phone: a man in a baseball cap and denim shorts stands beside the biggest yam I’ve ever seen—it looks to be almost twice his size. The caption from Kajiaki reads as follows: “This yam is from Manusi Village, dug by John Saks, 35 years old. It’s the longest in Yombu since ever: 2.75 metres.” The man smiles proudly: he has earned respect for his labours—and everyone will eat.
This story is the second in a series. Read Part 1 here to find out what a bride price ceremony looks like—giant yam towers and all!
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