My question then, is why do they farm it? I personally don't drink it because of the way it effects me...and my skin...or lack thereof when I drink it.
Kapm, that is a very simple question with a very simple answer. I can remember in the 80ies there was never a problem with the Tudei kava, they just never grew it, it would grow wild and they left it alone, they had there Noble kava so they never thought about the Tudei kava.
Then in the mid 90ies things changed because of China and there contact in Vanuatu, there contact urged all the farmers to plant the Tudei kava because he was buying it all and sending it to China. The reason was that the Tudei kava grows faster and is not affected by all the pests and other stuff that the Noble kava has to deal with. So the farmers started to grow Tudei and Noble, right now most farmers have about half of there crops in Tudei and the other half in Noble. Remember they only drink Noble and it is against the law to sell the Tudei kava over there.
Now the contact that China had is no longer in business so the farmers are stuck with a crop of Tudei kava that they can not sell legally so what they do is they harvest and dry the Tudei kava and they mix it with the Noble kava and sell that as export, they themselves do not drink the spiked kava, they still drink only Noble kava. They are only trying to get money from there farmed kava, even if it is Tudei kava.
The problem is with the suppliers that buy the kava from the farmers, not all of them can get to where the office is that does the testing of the kava and the other problem is that even when they do test there kava, when they grab some of the kava in the batch that they just bought are they grabbing the Noble kava that is mixed in with the Tudei or are they getting the Tudei or a mix of both, we don't know. It is very possible that they grab mostly noble kava just by chance so it all checks out fine. Also remember that they test for kavalactone content and chemotype to tell if it is Tudei kava. This is not very accurate when you are using spiked kava because when they add the Tudei to the Noble kava it changes the chemotype and not in a natural way, this new chemotype could be different from anything that Dr. Lebot has classified, there are only a few chemotype groups and each different kava will fit into one of those groups. This new man made chemotype might now fit into any of the groups so that is why the colormetric test or as we call it the acetone test is so important because it looks for a part of the plant only in tudei kava and it is very accurate.
So the farmers actually do not understand that they are doing harm to there kava industry by doing this. As I said at the begining, they never had this problem in the 80ies, it was easy to get a good quality Vanuatu kava and it is very different that what everyone drinks now, because most of the kava is spiked and that does cause a stronger effect or if it is spiked too much then they get a hang over or just plain sick. This would never happen with Noble kava, not from Hawaii or Vanuatu. So the simple answer is that the farmers are just trying to hide the Tudei in with the Noble so they do not have a total loss on half there crop of kava.
Let me know if you folks have any questions on this. Aloha.
Chris
Aloha.