Like many of Ubud’s young men, Gede sports a stylish
red streak in his hair, ear plugs and smart Tshirts. His family
sent him to Ubud for high school and he remained after graduation,
finding a little work here and there and hanging out with
his friends.
Then he took up with D, a foreign woman with a bee in her
bonnet about organic agriculture. Gede grew up in a village
where almost everyone was a farmer, and they all used chemical
inputs as a matter of course. He thought D was a bit cracked
on the subject, but realized that something had to change
in his village.
“The people grow vegetables to sell, but it’s
very uncertain,” he explains. “The prices fluctuate
and the chemicals are getting expensive. Farmers are poor.
I never wanted to be a farmer, that’s why I stayed in
Ubud.”
About this time he met Chakra, a young man who had grown up
on a 40 are farm just south of Ubud. Chakra remembered the
abundant wildlife in the rice fields when he was a child,
how he hunted for frogs and eels and picked medicinal plants
in the sawah. For 20 years the land had been used to grow
rice and sweet potatoes. The fields had never been left fallow
in that time or received any fertilizer except for chemical
inputs. Gradually, the animals and wild plants disappeared
along with the rich biomass that had nurtured them. By the
fall of 2005, the rice crop was failing. Most of the crop
was brown and burnt-looking a month before harvest.
Chakra had been working with IDEP Foundation since the tsunami,
and he’d been deeply involved with IDEP’s permaculture
training centre in Aceh since its establishment. “I
really feel that permaculture is the solution for our land,”
he told me. “My father and I want to restore it to the
condition it was in before he started using chemical fertilizers
and pesticides. We plan to gradually make the whole farm organic.”
Chakra has now almost finished training as a Green Hand, or
professional permaculture trainer, at IDEP’s GreenHand
Field School about 50 km south of Bandah Aceh. On a trip back
to Bali, he and Gede met for the first time. Within hours,
he had inspired Gede with his own passion to restore his family’s
land and grow wholesome organic food. A few weeks later, Gede
found himself on an airplane headed to Aceh to take a two-week
Village Design Course at the school.
This was a giant step for Gede. The young man from a small
town faced a leap of faith in farming techniques and a leap
in culture and experience. “I was afraid to go,”
he says frankly now. “My family was afraid for me too.
All we hear about in the media is how dangerous and violent
Aceh is. We had a special ceremony in my village so I would
be protected. I’d never flown alone before, and the
culture in Aceh is very different. I was lonely and disoriented
for the first few days.”
But very soon Gede discovered that he was in a safe and bountiful
place. His Acehnese companions were friendly and helpful,
he swam in the unpolluted waters of a rushing river, caught
fresh fish and worked in the gardens. He learned to grow vegetables
without chemical fertilizers or insecticides and how to design
toilets, houses and even a market. He learned about nutrition
and the diseases caused by chemical exposure, and how to do
community mapping. Australian permaculture trainer Steve Cran
inspired him with his broad base of grassroots knowledge gleaned
from years of teaching in Timor. “I’m different
now. A year ago I was bored, I wasn’t interested in
gardening. After Aceh, I’m determined to return to my
family’s land and start organic farming.” It’s
true that Gede is different; he has a new air of confidence
and energy, and drives to his village almost every day now
from Ubud.
But his enthusiasm was met with suspicion and obstacles. The
farmers in his village told him he was crazy, that he could
never grow crops without pesticides. Offers of land were withdrawn.
Gede is left with 25 are of his father’s land as his
demonstration plot. “I’ve already planted lots
of soybeans as green manure,” he declares. “My
goal is to grow organic red rice. Currently it sells for the
same price as white rice in the village, so I need to find
a good market for it. When I can prove that organic food sells
for more, others will want to learn.”
Gede and Chakra are a new generation of Balinese farmers —
young, educated in organic growing and passionate about the
land. After their time with the GreenHand Field School, they
have the skills and knowledge to create chemical-free food
security in their communities and restore rice land exhausted
by decades of intensive chemical farming. But only when they
can demonstrate the profitability of organic growing will
others follow their example. And they need support in making
the transition and finding markets for their produce.
It was heartening to learn that Bali’s new Tourism Board
Chairman Pak Bagus Sudibya is a strong supporter of Bali’s
traditional rice culture. He believes that introducing profitable,
non-chemical farming will attract younger Balinese back to
their ancestral land and maintain the legacy of green rice
fields which is such a draw for tourists. “The world
is spending millions on organic products,” he pointed
out in a recent interview in Bali & Beyond. “Singapore
is among the big spenders, and the cargo holds of flights
to Singapore from here are about 60% empty. The market is
certainly there.”
Maybe this is Bali’s tipping point, where bored young
men are tipped off the sidewalks back to their land, supported
by an enlightened Tourism Board and organizations such as
IDEP. Lead on, Chakra and Gede. May a legion form behind you.
