In search of sustainable farming

Written by Nicola Edwards

Nicola Edwards
In Indonesia, most farming is based on the heavy use of artificial pesticides and
fertilisers. The switch to these conventional farming practices began in the 1970s
when the Suharto government encouraged Green Revolution methods. New rice
varieties required pesticides and fertilisers to boost production, resulting in

Indonesias temporary self-sufficiency in rice. But these new farming methods

have caused negative environmental impacts, decried by many civil society
organisations. Tejo Pramono of the Indonesian Peasants Union and La Via
Campesina argues that conventional agriculture kills good organisms within the
soil and ultimately leads to more severe pest outbreaks, because it damages the
natural ecosystem. According to Dr Ni Lu Kartini of the Bali Organic Association,
the impacts of conventional agriculture are particularly worrying in Bali, where
tourist-fuelled development already strains the natural environment. She explains,
Balis farming land is already very degraded and tourism is decreasing as a
result of the way we are mistreating our land.
A plea for environment and culture
In response to the degradation caused by conventional farming, Indonesia now
supports a growing trend towards sustainable and organic agricultural practices. In
addition to commercial ventures, non-government organisations (NGOs) and
farmers unions throughout Indonesia promote a return to traditional sustainable
methods as well as new, more environmentally friendly farming techniques.
Several of these initiatives are clustered in Bali, including the Bali Organic
Association, VECO-Indonesia and the Indonesian Development of Education and
Permaculture Foundation. While these NGOs are linked to commercial ventures,
they are also driven by the desire to promote social and environmental ideals.
Kartini, founder of the Bali Organic Association, one of Indonesias oldest
sustainable farming groups, argues that adopting organic farming is imperative,
not only to save the Balinese environment but also to preserve Balis culture.
Kartini recalls that when she was young, Balinese farmers were largely selfsufficient, buying only salt, clothing and shrimp paste. But since the 1980s,

farming has become increasingly dependent on agrochemical inputs, markets and

credit. Kartini laments that not only do farmers spend a large portion of their
incomes on chemicals, but these products degrade their soil as well as the greater
environment. She insists that the answer to both problems is sustainable farming:
I am certain that Bali, with its strong spirit, can be farmed organically. Organics
can preserve Balis natural environment and culture by ensuring that biodiversity
is maintained.
Kartini is particularly keen on cultivating earthworms, which allow farmers to
control their own fertiliser factories and free themselves from external inputs.
She also describes earthworms as being linked with Balinese Hinduism, recalling
with zeal a story about Brahma entering the earth in the form of a worm,
thousands of years ago, to purify the soil of poison. According to Kartini, this
must be understood as a prediction of the current environmental crisis caused by
mainstream agricultural practices.
When the Bali Organic Association was first established as a discussion forum in
1989, staff worked with individual farmers on a grass-roots level, holding
workshops to teach them how to make organic fertilisers and pesticides. It also
provided worms for farmers to re-introduce in degraded soil. Now the Bali
Organic Association is often invited to villages to teach sustainable farming
methods. It has worked with the Indonesian branch of the Belgian NGO
Vredeseilanden (VECO) to teach its System of Rice Intensification farming to
increase productivity of irrigated rice and encourage farming communities to
organise local post-harvest processing. The Bali Organic Association has also
introduced local quality-control sorting of organic rice, which Kartini says has
resulted in more income from rice production remaining in village communities.
More recently the organisation has expanded its activities to include consumer
education and distribution of organic products. Since 2007, the Bali Organic
Association has focused on increasing consumer awareness about the health
benefits of organics, particularly by educating housewives and school children in
Denpasar. Kartini asserts that the pesticide residue in conventional produce causes
a variety of illnesses, mental disorders and dysfunctional social behaviour, from
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, to incest, infanticide and even
the American-led aggression in Iraq. She explains: If the fertiliser we use is
contaminated, then everything will become contaminated. Even our way of
thinking. In 2008 the organisation began testing organic products for sale in
Denpasar retail outlets, checking that producers are not falsely labelling goods as
organic. Although Indonesia does not yet have an official certification system, the
association is investigating ways to legally pursue retailers and producers caught
falsely marketing conventional goods as organic.

An international vision
While Kartini and her organisation pursue a distinctly Balinese version of organic
agriculture, other NGOs in Indonesia promote a more globalised understanding of
sustainable farming and its benefits. VECO-Indonesias sustainable agriculture
system helps farmers obtain a fair price for their products in a way that is socially
and environmentally sound, working on the premise that only small-scale
agriculture controlled by family farmers can create food security and improve
environmental conditions and farmers livelihoods. VECO campaigns for
structural change in the agrofood production system to give farmers better access
to markets and against neoliberal economic policies, arguing that governments
must moderate the economy to protect social and environmental interests.
Most of VECO-Indonesias activities focus on developing alternative agricultural
systems in Eastern Indonesia and Sulawesi through the Low External Input
Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) method. While organic agriculture normally
refers to farming that is entirely free of chemical inputs, LEISA encourages
farmers to simply reduce chemical use, where possible substituting locally
available natural alternatives. For example, VECO has helped Indonesian farmers
develop their own green manure an alternative to chemical fertiliser using
local fibrous plants including alang-alang grass. While LEISA methods improve
farmers livelihoods by reducing input costs, LEISA products cannot be marketed
as organic and sold at a premium price, although many LEISA farmers have
converted to entirely organic production and can market their surplus organic rice
at a premium price in Jakarta and abroad.

VECO-Indonesia
VECO-Indonesia provides funding, facilities and capacity-building support for
local partners. For example, since 2002 it has worked with the Sustainable
Indonesian Komodo Foundation (Yayasan Komodo Indonesia Lestari) in West
Manggarai district, Flores, to teach 3000 farmers LEISA rice-growing techniques.
These farmers used to be forced to sell their crops at low prices in advance each
year to pay debts, but have overcome this vicious cycle since adopting sustainable
methods. In an attempt to increase consumer awareness about organic and
sustainable food, VECO holds exhibitions of sustainable farming products in Bali
and Java, showcasing quality and availability.
VECO-Indonesia also promotes sustainable agriculture practices and networking
through their quarterly magazine, SALAM. While the magazine addresses
livelihood concerns and marketing of organic products, it is aimed at farmers,

NGOs and consumers who are interested in sustainable agriculture as a system,

not simply as a product. VECO distributes up to 2000 copies of each edition, with
articles about both Indonesian and international sustainable agriculture initiatives.
The Contacts section in each issue of the magazine supports networking among
sustainable agriculture organisations throughout Indonesia, highlighting groups
promoting Indonesian alternative agriculture. According to Country
Representative, Rogier Eijkens, VECO aims to work more and more on the
networking function of the magazine. And there you have something that might
grow into more as a movement.
Different methods, same movement
The Bali Organic Association and VECO-Indonesia promote different
understandings of sustainable agriculture. Kartini supports more strictly defined
organic practices while VECO-Indonesia argues that even reducing the use of
chemical inputs is a good starting point for change. The two organisations are
based on different conceptual underpinnings as well. The Bali Organic
Association is driven by Kartinis personal experience of Balinese farming and
environmental degradation, while VECOs initiatives are based on a more general
critique of the international agribusiness system.
Though VECO-Indonesia and the Bali Organic Association promote sustainable
agriculture through different initiatives, both are parts of a broad Indonesian
movement towards sustainable farming. According to VECO staff member IG
Suarja, VECO-Indonesia is part of a moral movement. A movement that is
concerned with raising the awareness of farmers, society more broadly and of
the government. It is a movement that argues that agricultural management is not
just about output but also preserving the land. Although the efforts of the Bali
Organic Association are more grassroots, Kartini also sees herself as part of an
ethically- and spiritually-based movement. These two organisations embody the
beginnings of a diverse movement towards sustainable agriculture in Indonesia, a
movement that is actively sowing the seeds of a new, greener revolution.
Nicola Edwards (nedw8099@uni.sydney.edu.au) recently completed Honours in
Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney, where her thesis examined the
social movement towards sustainable agriculture in Indonesia.
This article is part of the Indonesia's Environmental Challenges mini-series.Inside
Indonesia 101: Jul-Sep 2010

Would I like to be a farmer?

Written by AKATIGA and Ben White
AKATIGA and Ben White
Afar (29) is the son of a tenant rice farmer in Wajo, South Sulawesi. He works as
a garment trader in the Bombana mining region of Northeast Sulawesi, several
hours and a ferry crossing away from home. He has no ambition to follow in his
parents footsteps. Its better to be a trader than a landless farmer. If youre a
tenant on someone elses land you have to start work early in the morning, youd
be ashamed if the owner sees you going to the fields late in the day. But if you
have your own land and feel a bit lazy, you can be as late as you like. Another
disadvantage of farming, he says, is the high risks involved, particularly harvest
failure and unstable prices.
Agriculture, and small-scale farming in particular, is still the biggest single source
of employment for young people in rural areas. But all over Indonesia as in
many other countries, both rich and poor one hears people saying that young
people aren't interested in farming. Farmers themselves often say they hope their
children will find better work than farming. Does this mean there will be no next
generation of smallholder farmers to produce rice and other food for Indonesias
growing population?
Turning away from farming?
Researchers in the Bandung-based non-government organisation (NGO) Akatiga
have been studying these issues since 2013, in 12 rice-producing villages in West
Java, Central Java and South Sulawesi. We talked with young men and women
between the ages of 13 and 30 from different backgrounds. Some were children of
landowners, others from smallholder, tenant farmers or landless families. When
we look closely at these rural young peoples views and hopes, the picture is quite
complex, as the stories below from young people in South Sulawesi demonstrate.
Ami (17) is a high school student whose father has a relatively large three-hectare
farm, but only owns one-third of the land. She has never helped her father on the
farm. She hopes to go to college away from home in Makassar, to study

accounting or economics and then to get a job in a bank. But her mother prefers
that she go to college in the nearby district town of Sengkang. Ami anticipates that
when she is married, she will want to come back to live in the village, where her
mother can help look after her children. Her new boyfriend wants to join the
police. But if he doesnt succeed and becomes a farmer, she can accept that: So
long as I can do whatever work I choose, and he can make a living by farming so
we dont have to borrow money, that wont be a problem.
Ladis parents also have a smallholder farm, part of which they own. Ladi is a
student in a teacher training college but often helps his father in the fields. His
father does not give him wages, but pays his tuition fees. Farming, he says, is hot
and thirsty work, and sometimes you have to work in the rain. But I wouldnt be
ashamed its better to work hard in the fields than to hang around the house.
When he becomes a teacher, he says, he will still work on the farm. His friends
who have moved away from the village earn more than they would in farming, but
much of their earnings are spent on lodging, food and other needs. They often tell
him they miss their home village.
Rian is the son of the village head, a large landowner with 20 hectares of rice
fields. A final-year student at Makassar State University, he hopes later to get a
job teaching sports. Successful villagers, he says, are those who own land but
dont cultivate it themselves its hard for a tenant farmer to be a success. Most
local farmers do not own their land and the big landowners are mostly outsiders.
Those whose parents own land may expect to get some land when they marry, or
after their parents die. But many have moved to Sumatra and work as drivers
delivering oil from the Tembilahan refinery, where they can earn more than
farmers. Later when he takes over the land he will find share tenants to work it,
and let my desk earn money for me the money will come in by itself and I
wont have to go to the fields.
Hara (17), from a landless family, is well aware of these divergent prospects
between the land-rich and land-poor. When we asked her, Do you think there is a
future in agriculture for young people? she replied, Do you mean those who
have land, or those who dont? For people like us with no land, there is no future
in agriculture. Hara often joins harvesting groups to earn some wages, but hopes
one day to get a job as a shop assistant in the nearby market town, even though
she knows that her monthly earnings would be very low. Earning only Rp.300,000
(A$30) per month, she would not be able to afford the daily commuting cost and
would have to sleep on the shop owners floor.

As these stories show, there are many young people who could become farmers
but do not want to, and there are others who would gladly become farmers, but
have no chance to do so. What lies behind this mismatch?
Barriers to becoming a farmer
In most villages, the landholding structure means that most young people have no
realistic prospect of becoming farmers, or at least not while they are still young.
Landlessness is widespread and less than half of farmers own the land they
cultivate. The only people who have some chance of owning land while they are
still young are those who come from wealthy land-owning households. But they
typically go to university and aim for a future in a secure, salaried job; their
parents also have the resources to get them into these jobs. They may look
forward to inheriting and owning land, but as a source of income through rent;
they have no interest in farming it.
Meanwhile, young people growing up in smallholder farming families may
eventually inherit a piece of land, but their parents have too little land to hand
over part of it to their children while they are still young. They may be in their
forties or fifties when they finally receive land from their parents. For the many
young people whose parents are landless there is only the prospect of becoming a
sharecropper or farm labourer, unless they can find another way to access land.
For young people like Hara and many others, the only possible way to become a
farmer is to first find work first outside agriculture (and often outside the village),
and hope to save enough money to buy or rent some land.
Buying land is becoming an increasingly unrealistic option except for those who
are already rich. This is due to speculative investment in land (by non-farmers)
and rising land prices. In our 12 research villages, the price of one hectare of
irrigated rice land varied between about Rp.100 million and 1500 million. Local
wages or informal sector earnings, meanwhile, are generally not much more than
Rp.1 million per month. Migrant worker wages in factories, or in oil palm
plantations in Malaysia, are around 2.5 million per month. Therefore, even if a
young person could save Rp.500,000 per month out of those earnings, it would
take him or her between seven years (in the cheapest location in South Sulawesi)
and 100 years (in the most expensive, in Central Java) to buy a rice farm of only
0.4 hectares.
It is not surprising, then, that so many young rural men and women decide to
migrate to do various kinds of paid jobs or informal-sector work, sometimes in
other regions or as far away as Malaysia. But young peoples decisions to farm or
not to farm, and to stay in the village or to migrate, are not permanent decisions.

Many of todays older farmers themselves migrated when young, and returned
when they had saved money or when land became available.
One kind of farm work that is quite attractive to young men and women is rice
harvesting. Working in teams with sickles and a thresher, harvesters can earn
relatively good wages of Rp.40,00050,000 per day. This is still an important
source of income for young people in landless and near-landless households, and
it is also an occasion for boys and girls to meet. Some school children miss days
of school so they can join the harvest, from ages as young as ten years. During the
mornings harvesting work they cannot get to know each other, as their faces are
completely covered to protect them from the heat and sun. But during the mid-day
rest period they take off their face-coverings, and can chat and exchange phone
numbers. Many young harvesters have found their boy or girlfriends, and in some
cases their future marriage partners, in this way.
However, harvesting work is now threatened by the introduction of cheap
Japanese or Chinese combine harvesters, typically owned by a few of the villages
richest landowners.
One combine harvester (serviced by a couple of paid labourers) replaces about 50
manual harvesters working with sickles. These machines, which cost about
Rp.390 million, were already operating in some of our research villages in South
Sulawesi, and they are easily available in Java. The Department of Agriculture has
even donated combine harvesters to some farmers groups, so that they can enjoy
modern technology. But in the context of Indonesias jobless growth and high
youth unemployment rates, this is inappropriate technology. It does not increase
productivity, or improve anyones quality of life; it simply transfers harvesting
earnings which used to go into the pockets of many workers to the already
prosperous combine owners and the few lucky workers they employ to run the
machines.
An image problem?
There may of course be other reasons why leaving the village seems attractive to
young people. Mass media often portray the rural world and farmers as backward
and poor. But many dimensions of rural life are changing fast. In many villages
connectivity is now as good as in the cities; motorbikes are cheap and common;
and all young people are busy with Facebook accounts. Where a few years ago
any sort of mobile phone was a positional good (one whose value to its owner
lies in the fact that others do not have it), now it is more often a question of
smartphone versus basic phone and good quality versus cheap Chinese
smartphones. In Kali Loro village, Yogyakarta, for example, many children have
their own mobile phones before leaving primary school. Those whose parents

cannot afford them may be supported by an elder sibling or cousin who has found
work outside the village. Those without phones can still open Facebook accounts
and borrow their friends phones. These young people engage actively with global
ideas and global youth life styles, which may make them look at rural life and
farming differently to how their parents did.
When we look at young peoples migration and their apparent decision not to
become farmers, we need to take a longer-term, life-course perspective. If
Indonesias rice and other food needs are to be met in future largely by
smallholder farmers, rather than by the large corporate industrial food estates
favoured by the technocrats, rural life and farming have to be made more
attractive to young people. We need to have a clear idea of the main barriers
both practical and cultural to young peoples entry into farming, either while
still young, or as a later lifetime option. First, the issue of young people and
access to land needs to be taken seriously. This generational issue has attracted
little attention in Indonesia, although it is interesting to see some of those advising
the new President on agricultural and food policy raising this issue.
There is a need to look at possibilities to take land out of private property markets
and to allocate it in use-right form to young people; and also to find ways to curb
speculative investment in land. Speculation in land is bad for the economy (it is an
unproductive, parasitic form of investment), bad for social cohesion in rural areas,
and as we have seen, bad for young peoples prospects. While men and women
formally have equal rights to own land, there are many practical gender
distinctions and barriers to young womens access to land and farming
opportunities.
Indonesias young people are the most important potential source of innovation,
energy and creativity in developing new, environmentally responsible and highly
productive farming practices. Much can be done in general education, the public
media and particularly on social media to correct the prevailing images of farming
and rural life. Concrete examples of young men and women farmers, practising
new, smart and creative ways of production and making a decent living out of it,
can potentially have powerful impact. For most of the young people we have
talked to it is not rural life or agriculture as such, but the lack of local jobs and the
poor incomes from smallholder farming, that make them decide to move away.
The AKATIGA Foundation (www.akatiga.org) has been active since 1991 in
research, advocacy and knowledge sharing to promote social transformation of
marginal groups.Ben White is Professor Emeritus of Rural Sociology at the
International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. This article draws on
Yogaprasta A. Adinugraha and Rina Herawatis article in Jurnal Analisis Sosial

19 no. 1 (2015) and Ben Whites ongoing research on young people in Kali Loro
village, Yogyakarta. The names of informants are pseudonyms.