Pak Adi Kharisma is a worried man. Statistics tell him that
his country is facing a serious food security crisis. The
thoughtful Rotarian leafs through a bundle of newspaper clippings
to point out some disturbing facts. Food security means having
enough food. By the year 2030, Indonesia’s population
will have grown from 230 million to 425 million. Per capita
consumption of rice is about 139 kilograms per person per
year. Multiply 139 kg by 425,000,000 people to arrive at the
amount of rice Indonesia will have to produce every year to
feed its people -- just 23 years from now. My calculator doesn’t
have nearly enough zeros to do the job.
An insightful newspaper article written by a journalist named
Hermas puts the problem into perspective. Solution One: Double
the area of land under rice cultivation from 11 million hectares
to 22 million. We all know the combination of population pressure,
ever-increasing industry and the occasional villa development
ensure that every year will see less land under cultivation,
not more. (Please don’t get me started on the insanity
of taking agricultural land out of production to build houses
for foreigners.) Solution Two: Double rice production from
30 million tons a year to 60. Sadly, even if the System of
Rice Intensification (SRI) is widely adopted, Pak Adi feels
that less than 25% of farmers are industrious enough to undertake
the more intensive cultivation needed for this method. Solution
Three: Zero population growth. This is just not going to happen.
Solution Four: Reduce the 100% dependency of rice as a staple
food by replacing 50% of it with locally grown alternatives.
Bingo! Pak Adi, thinking out of the box as is his habit, began
to research how this could be done with sweet potato (ubi),
his favourite traditional food. He was further inspired by
a visit to Turin in 2006 as a guest of the World Meeting of
Food Community / Terra Madre as a representative of Indonesia
and the humble ubi. With the enthusiastic support of international
food experts and proponents of the Slow Food movement, he
launched his little purple restaurant and growing line of
food products in Denpasar last year.
After some experimentation, he found that cooking and mashing
purple and yellow ubi and adding this paste to the rice during
cooking made a palatable staple. Gently tinted mauve and yellow,
it has a pleasant taste and texture not too different from
white rice. “By using 30% ubi and 70% rice, the nutrient
value is increased,” Adi explains. “Ubi is a gluten-free
antioxidant with high fibre, beta-carotene, prebiotics and
a low glycemic index. If we then replace another 20% of the
rice with locally produced legumes like pigeon peas, soy beans,
long beans and peanuts, we will have a really nutritious staple.”
Pak Adi is in fact re-inventing the wheel here. Back in the
1960s, then-President Sukarno introduced the concept of mixing
rice with sweet potato, taro and corn to make it go further.
My staff remembers that when they were young their staple
was still a combination of 70% ubi and 30% rice except during
Galungan, the only time in the year when they tasted unadulterated
rice.
Pak Adi’s products are slowly gaining popularity as
a novelty, especially after 10 local TV stations featured
them early in 2007. His restaurant serves his trademark mauve
and yellow nasi campur, tasty ubi juice, ubi ice cream and
vacuum-packed fresh paste that can be mixed with other food
at home -- all bright purple of course. He also produces moist
and really delicious brownies made from local cocoa beans,
coconut oil, ubi flour, sugar and peanuts. None of his products
contain preservatives or artificial colour. In fact it’s
hard to imagine an artificial colour that could compete with
the vibrant natural purple hue of his favourite ingredient.
It would be helpful to have government support on this important
initiative, but as in every other country bureaucrats can
hardly think 23 months ahead, never mind 23 years. So Pak
Adi is undertaking his project single-handed.
His goal of working toward a sustainable local staple food
has taken him in some interesting directions. He has a program
that trains local senior high school students to be productive
and successful farmers. He’s about to launch a project
that trains village women to make food products for sale locally
using the tiny ubi tubers that are left over after harvest.
“This will empower women by helping them generate income,
and the children will grow accustomed to the taste of ubi
early in life; they’ll also be healthier!” Pak
Adi is aware of the critical importance of educating women
in nutrition, hygiene and basic economics. He also plans to
start throwing birthday parties for young children, serving
his tasty purple treats instead of McJunkFood. Although he
wants to sell his products, he’s mainly interested in
socializing the addition of ubi to the local diet in any way
he can. Pak Adi is also working with the East Bali Poverty
Project to introduce the growing of ubi in these remote and
impoverished villages.
Of the 20 varieties of ubi he’s found, he selected four
-- white, yellow, purple and orange -- for his products. He
starts the young plants himself and gives them to farmers
in the mountains to grow for him along with pigeon peas, soy
beans, pumpkins and peanuts. If intensively farmed, 20 to
40 tons of ubi can be grown on one hectare.
Sweet potatoes grow all over the world, from Papua to Okinawa
and Hawaii, and were already being cultivated in North America
when Columbus arrived in 1492. Most of the world’s sweet
potatoes – about 80% -- are grown in China. Around 600
varieties are known, some growing up to 2 metres in length.
Purple ice cream has long been popular in Hawaii and Japan,
and I’ve sampled bright purple desserts in Manila.
It’s not often that someone comes up with an achievable
solution to a big problem. Pak Adi’s mission is worth
supporting, especially by helping bring it to the attention
of officials who can help popularize his tasty, nutritious
and very colourful products and the concept behind them.
Next time you’re in Denpasar, drop by the little purple
Warung Sela Boga at 238 Jalan Teuku Umar, call Pak Adi at
0811 397 590 or email him at adi_kh@hotmail.com for more information.
