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Dream Builders: Community members can get cash for their breadfruit

Dream Builders Agriculture Products owner, Su’a Alexander Eli Jennings (far right) pictured with a family who last week delivered a truck load of breadfruit
Local agriculture company expands to accommodate off island interest
fili@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — With off island investors expressing interest in locally produced flour from breadfruit and other local crops — such as green bananas — Dream Builders Agriculture Products has expanded its operations, to include technical training for staff as well as buying breadfruit from families, who in return get paid for it.

Based in Pavaiai, Dream Builders' goal and focus is creating long term, sustainable jobs and supporting the community by purchasing breadfruit from families with breadfruit trees.

“Our mission now is to collect as much breadfruit as we can with the current breadfruit season,” said company owner Su’a Alexander Eli Jennings, who is also the Swains Island faipule.

“So I need every breadfruit I can get my hands on,” he told Samoa News early this week, noting that the company had started accepting last week, deliveries of breadfruit - some by the truckload — from local families who are getting cash in return.

According to Su’a, it was about three months ago that he received word from three off island investors, who are very interested “in our locally made breadfruit flour product and they are also fascinated with our goals, as this project is developing.”

Dream Builders has designed and built a “very specific technique to dry the breadfruit, preserving its neutrinos property,” Su’a said, adding that there were a couple of issues encountered along the way: trying to get people to believe in this technology, as this is a developing industry.

“Not a lot of people wanted to invest in something they are not familiar with,” he said.

However, that appears to have changed, with more publicity on Dream Builders’ project in American Samoa and the technology they have developed to dry breadfruit and then milling it  to produce flour.

“There has been a lot of positive feedback, even rave reviews, since we launched three years ago,” Su’a said, adding that the reviews have captured the attention of off island investors.

“We specifically told the investors that this whole project is focused on American Samoa, with the main goal of boosting the local economy and creating more jobs,” he said. “We want to focus and develop this for American Samoa.”

“So the investors are all in support of focusing the development for American Samoa,” he added, noting that as soon as interest from off island investors came through, Dream Builders started work on extending its operation by adding three more dryers.

The dryers are retrofitted shipping containers that were built from scratch, said Su'a, adding that local people were trained on building the dryers and also trained to operate them.

 “Dream Builders provides technical training for employees to build specialty dryers and processing procedures to make the highest quality flour from breadfruit - and other local crops,” he said.

Expansion of operations comes at the same time as the current breadfruit season, which Su’a said “is a great opportunity to further assist our local families to earn unplanned money by selling us their un-used breadfruit”.

Additional staff has been hired, with specific teams going out to families to collect breadfruit and even helping to pick specific breadfruit to be used.  Currently, close to 20 people are employed at Dream Builders.

“The team knows the breadfruit, and that is useful,” he said and stressed that the breadfruit has to be in a certain condition in order for him to buy it.

"The breadfruit cannot be over-ripe and it can’t be too young; so we’re very careful in selecting the breadfruit.”

As to the type of breadfruit preferred by Dream Builders, Su’a said the “primary ones” are ma’afala, puou, and maopo.

The current employees are assigned to different capacities. “One team is peeling, one team is processing, one team is out collecting breadfruit,” he said.

Families wanting to sell breadfruit to Dream Builders can call: 256-4512.