Balinese Farmers Use IT: Bali

High in the small mountain village of Pancasari some 50 kilometers north of Denpasar the stocky fingers of a young Balinese farmer are dancing on a computer keyboard typing the contents of a website according to an interesting article in the JP.

I Wayan Kanten, 29, once saw computers as strange and daunting. He never thought of using one to help his farm business. But he has lost his fear of technology. Now the head of the Young Independent Farmers Group (Kelompok Tani Muda Mandiri) knows how to build a web site to promote the 12 member group's organic capsicum pepper business.

In the heart of the information era when lots of young people see farming as traditional and old-fashioned, Kanten and his friends use the latest technology to learn about organic farming and to find contacts through the Internet to distribute their products.

Kanten's first encounter with computers was when the software company Microsoft, working with the Mitra Mandiri Foundation, set up a Community Training and Learning Center last June in Pancasari. The facility is equipped with a half dozen computers, a printer and an Internet connection.

Microsoft flew Kanten to Jakarta for computer training along with young community leaders from Gianyar, Bali, East Java and North Sumatra. It was part of the company's Unlimited Potential program which aims to introduce computer technology to people in rural areas worldwide to help communities improve their quality of life.

Since 2003 the company has been working with institutions including the Asia Foundation of the United States and the Indonesian Coalition for Women to set up community training centres. So far Microsoft has opened 33 centres across Indonesia and trained more than 4,000 people.

Now in Pancasari, the knowledge has spread to 286 young farmers.

Kanten and his friends tend to their peppers in greenhouses during the day and teach village youngsters how to use the computer at night. "We also train youngsters here to love farming" Kanten said. The villagers participating in the training are charged Rp 50,000 for 15 classes.

"Part of the aim of the program is to curb urbanization and provide ways for people to improve their quality of life through technology" Microsoft Indonesia spokesperson Cynthia Iskandar said.

Kanten said since the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 hurt the tourism business people have been coming back to their villages. Now, Ketut and Kanten have forgotten about the lure of the city and are staying in Pancasari supplying almost their entire crop of 300 kilograms of organic capsicum per week to PT DIF Nusantara a supplier of fresh vegetables to hotels and supermarkets in Bali, Lombok and Java.

The two-year-old farmers' group borrowed Rp 150 million in capital from the Bali Organic Farmers Foundation which Kanten also contacted by email to establish six greenhouses. The group has been growing capsicum in greenhouses for seven months. They have harvested 11.5 tons of capsicum. The distributor wants them to supply 1.5 tons per week but the group's production capacity has yet to reach that amount.

The head of the Bali Organic Farmers Foundation, Joko Trisayoga, said the farmers' group in Pancasari had wider knowledge and was more innovative than other groups under his guidance. The foundation serves 26 farmers' groups. Indeed the digital divide between urban and rural areas in Indonesia as well as between the haves and the have-nots, is wide. Only 2 percent of the population of 215 million have personal computers. Only 16 million people, mostly in big cities, have access to the Internet.

The success story goes beyond Pancasari with a peanut farmer in Bojonegoro and a small and medium enterprise group in Surabaya also using the internet connections at area CTLCs to market their products.

It's always heart-warming to read about success stories and especially in places that are suffering. It would be great to see this idea spread all over Bali.

Source : http://www.baliblog.com

Farmer’s Market: Ubud, Bali

A week spent mapping Bali’s rice fields was enough to convince one Negara farmer that chemical fertilizers come at a price beyond the rupiah.

“I was mapping with IDEP (Indonesian Development Permaculture) and got really sick and ended up in the intensive care unit for a week with chemical poisoning. I was already into organic farming, but that really shocked me,” says Sayu Komang, who is now committed to not only farming organically, but spreading the word, and healthy foods, to the wider community.

Sayu, along with almost a dozen other organic farmers, has set up a weekly organic food market in Ubud to not only sell their produce, but also to let the wider community know there is another choice in the foods they buy.

“We set up a cooperative of organic farmers late last year with the goal of marketing our chemical-free produce. There are a lot of farmers who have returned to traditional farming methods, but marketing their produce was a problem.

“The farmers’ market and cooperative was started to address that,” says Sayu, who travels weekly from Negara to sell her virgin coconut oils, cocoa and vanilla beans.

The farmers’ market is held from 9:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. every Saturday on the verandah of Pizza Bagus in Ubud. Pizza Bagus has given the space free to the cooperative to support the goals of Bali’s chemical-free farmers.

Sayu said the decision by farmers to shift from a dependence on chemical fertilizers to organic farming is not easy.

The sheer hard work involved in the changeover from chemical to chemical free farming had held many farmers back from the move.

“Organic farming is famous and more Balinese people are really getting into it, but in the beginning there are problems with pests and other farming issues.

“I help farmers work through these, teaching them how to control pests naturally. The mission of our farmers’ market is helping chemical free farmers and small business market the produce they have grown,” says Sayu.

The potential returns to farmers who take the plunge into organic farming are high, according to Sayu, who says her own farming family achieves much higher returns for their produce since going organic.

“I have a garden in Negara growing broccoli, lettuce, vanilla, coca and coconuts. We make our own virgin coconut oil that we press ourselves.

“My family formed a group to make the oil and they are all really happy with the results. We can sell at a much better price, because it is all chemical free. The family is very happy to have gone chemical-free,” says Sayu.

And the prices at the weekly market prove the value in better quality foods. Tomatoes sell like hotcakes for Rp 12,000 per kilo versus less than half that in supermarkets or traditional markets; lettuce goes for Rp 3000 per 100 grams and a loaf of fresh bread, still warm from the oven is Rp 17,000.

But these prices are not holding back customers, who weekly queue up to buy chemical free foods.

Some people even make the hour-long journey to Ubud from Kerobokan and Kuta to shop at the farmers’ market and discussions are now underway to expand into those areas.

She stresses all the food at the market is fresh with the farmers’ cooperative having a strict policy on the quality of foods sold at the market.

“All the food is fresh. We explained to the cooperative members that they have to sell really fresh food. Because we grow these ourselves the food is good and we try to grow the best quality we can,” says Sayu in between a rush of customers keen to try her chemical-free vanilla beans before they are sold out.

Trisha Sertori
Source : http://www.indonesialogue.com, http://pointreyesvisions.com