From trendy bars in New York, to anti-anxiety pills sold in Australia and New Zealand, the powdered root is taking off

On a Friday night in Suva, the capital of Fiji, the Kava Bure is filling up. Groups of people have started arriving to meet friends for a post-work basin or three of kava, a drink made from the root of the piper methysticum tree.

The bar, which is out in the open air with wooden tables surrounded by bamboo fencing, sells $5 or $10 bags of powdered kava. These are mixed in a plastic basin by an elderly Fijian man, who asks patrons if they would like the mix “sosoko” – strong – or “just right”, before giving them the basin and coconut shell bowls for drinking.

“Kava Bure is a place where I can just sit, relax and enjoy myself with friends after a long day at work. Normally, we would go there to have a few basins,” says Ropate Valemei, a frequent patron.

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Kava bars are relatively new in Fiji (compared to Vanuatu, where there are more than 300 bars) and reflect the shift of kava consumption from something drunk in traditional ceremonies or shared among family and friends while sitting on the floor around a tanoa (wooden kava bowl) or plastic basin to more commercial spaces.

But the appeal of the drink – known to have psychoactive qualities – is no longer confined to the Pacific. There are now roughly 100 kava bars across the US and Australia is preparing to allow commercial importation. In the meantime, the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory in Fiji has been set up, aiming to increase supply and sell kava in products from a brewable powder to anti-anxiety medication.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kava for sale at Suva Market. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

‘The demand just went up’

Kava sessions can last anywhere from an hour to several hours, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. The taste is earthy and the strong aftertaste is sometimes counteracted by sucking on a lolly or mint after consuming a bowl. In Fiji, seasoned drinkers are “black belts”, who can drink kava for hours, sometimes every day of the week. But for the uninitiated, the drink has an almost immediate numbing effect, which starts from the mouth and then eventually makes its way down the body, leaving a person with a relaxed sensation that gets stronger with every bowl.

But while extremely popular in the Pacific, kava has, for the most part, struggled to cut through internationally, in part due to tight regulations in Western countries, where kava has been blamed for causing liver problems, though evidence suggests this is only the case if kava is taken in conjunction with alcohol or other drugs.

Kava export earnings in Fiji peaked in the 1980s, at more than $FJD35m (US$16m) per year, largely driven by exports to Europe. After kava was banned in Europe in the 1990s, exports plummeted. But there has been steady growth since then, with the export market growing from about 900 tonnes per year in the 1990s to 6,000 tonnes in 2015.

By 2018, kava export earnings were approximately $FJ30.7m, with the largest amount being exported to the United States at 148,000kg, 80,000kg to New Zealand and 13,000kg to Hawaii.

Fiji’s kava market suffered a major setback in 2016 when it was hit by Tropical Cyclone Winston, the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the southern hemisphere. Winston devastated the country, causing $US1.4bn in damages – more than one third of the country’s GDP – and wiped out huge swathes of the kava crop.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mary Work has been selling kava for 18 years and has seen the huge spike in the growth of kava sales. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

But kava sellers who have been able to re-establish their businesses are experiencing a huge boom. The lack of kava supplies after the cyclone caused a spike in the price of A-grade kava from about $FJ40-60 to $FJ120 per kilogram. This dramatic increase, combined with a sudden interest in the drink from foreign markets, has meant that more people have begun planting kava crops, and even then they cannot keep up with demand.

Mary Work, a kava stall owner at Suva’s Municipal Market has been selling kava for 18 years and has had a front row seat to the spike in demand. “From my point of view, after the cyclone the demand just went up. And [even with] the high price, they just want it more now,” she adds.

“There is a lot of demand. My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand. One tonne a month ... And kava takes three to four years to mature.

“The people are flying over there, even from overseas … and a lot of people from Australia too, like Fijians living there are coming back and planting their kava now, which is good.

My husband is supplying the US and they want one tonne every month. He can’t meet the demand. Mary Work, kava seller

“The demand for kava is so high they [are] beginning to harvest young ones. One year, two year [-old plants], you know, so you getting young ones coming and you don’t allow it to mature because there is a lot of demand.”





Going high-tech

At the other end of the kava market is Fiji Kava Limited, also known as Taki Mai, one of two large kava processing facilities in Fiji. It is the first kava company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and in 2019 opened the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory, which will clone parent kava plants and grow standardised, quality-controlled plantlets at its factory in Levuka, the old capital of Fiji.

Fiji Kava’s laboratory sits on a hill behind the 140-year-old Levuka public school, nestled between two kava nurseries. Its factory is unprepossessing from the outside but inside it is a different story. Visitors have to remove their shoes and put on protective plastic feet coverings. The dark rooms are lit by florescent lights and lined with small glass jars holding tiny kava samples.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kava tissue culture samples at the world’s first kava tissue culture laboratory in Levuka, Fiji. Photograph: Talei Tora/The Guardian

The company is planning on initially growing 250,000 tissue culture plantlets and hopes to increase this by 500,000 plantlets annually. Fiji Kava Limited currently makes anti-anxiety capsules for the Australian, New Zealand and US markets and instant kava powder.

In October 2019, on a visit to Fiji, the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced that the personal kava import limit for people travelling from Fiji to Australia would be increased from 2kg to 4kg and that a pilot program would start by the end of 2020 allowing commercial importation of kava.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced the relaxation of laws regarding the importation of kava into Australia after a meeting with Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama during a visit to Fiji in October 2019. Photograph: David Mariuz/EPA

At the time of the kava announcement, Morrison described the relaxing of importation rules as a “further demonstration” of the countries’ close relationship. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, thanked him for the announcement, saying “the whole of Fiji” had been waiting for Australia’s rules on kava to change.

Kava retailer Pauline Benson says even this small increase in a personal importation allowance is welcome. “Australia has always had a huge demand for kava because there is a large Pacific Island population living in Australia and it’s so hard to get kava there… there is still a huge demand,” she says.

Back in Kave Bure in Suva, the tables are full as dusk arrives. Cries of “Bula!” – Fiji’s national greeting – ring out as someone in the kava circle takes a bowl to drink. Ropate Valemei says that while people often arrive at the bar with a few friends, over the course of an evening of drinking they will inevitably make many more. In the Pacific, whether it be for traditional ceremonies or in more modern social gatherings, kava continues to bring people together.