Drought forces villagers to eat cassava

Drought forces villagers to eat cassava

Oyos Saroso HN, The Jakarta Post, Lampung province

Many thousands of people from Lampung have been forced to start
eating cassava as the drought continues its stranglehold over the
impoverished province.

Hambali, a 46-year-old farmer from Sendangrejo village in
Central Lampung regency, says his family had run out of rice due
to crop failures.

"We are forced to eat tiwul (cassava-based food) that is
cooked with little rice. One kilogram of tiwul can be mixed with
a small portion of rice. That's enough to feed four people," he
said.

In previous dry seasons, Hambali's family and his neighbors
also consumed tiwul as their staple food. "Since the economic
crisis in 1997 we have been eating cassava. It is only during the
harvest season that we eat rice."

Rice is not much more expensive that tiwul. "Rice is sold for
Rp 2,700 (U.S.30 cents) per kilogram, while tiwul is only Rp
1,400 per kilogram. But under the current difficulties, we are
forced to choose tiwul."

Around 80 percent of the 800 families in Sendangrejo have to
eat cassava and corn as they can no longer afford rice.

Rusman, 73, a migrant resident in Sendangrejo, said that
before 1998 he only had to eat tiwul two months of each year at
the most. But since 1998, they had had to eat it all year round.
The current drought had added to their suffering.

Worse still, tiwul was now increasingly hard to find in
traditional markets as cassava had been similarly effected by the
drought, another villager Ismanto said.

Sawito's family, who live in Roworejo village, Gedongtataan
subdistrict, South Lampung regency, had also switched to cassava
as their harvest only kept them in rice for one month.

"After being cut to repay fertilizer debts, the total amount
of my net profit (from farming) is only Rp 300,000 this year.
Even some of this money has been used to buy fertilizer for the
next planting season," Suwito said.

Tiwul is also consumed in the neighboring villages of
Kotabaru, Umbul Klenong and Grujukan. "It's no problem. The
important thing is that our children can still go to school," he
added.

In East Lampung regency, cassava is being eaten by residents
from the subdistricts of Brajaselebah, Brajamukti, Purbolinggo
and Way Bungur.

Even many village heads from Brajaselebah have left their
villages to join other local residents in serving as pedicab
drivers or construction workers in downtown Bandarlampung, the
capital city of Lampung.

"If we continue to stay here, there is nothing we can hope for
because we don't have anything to harvest. It's better for my
husband to go to the city for work," said Lasiyah, 37, from
Brajaselebah, who also eats tiwul on a daily basis.

Her 60-year-old father Juminto said that being a construction
worker in the city was the only way for male residents in his
village to make a living for their families.

"In our village, crop failures often occur not only because of
flooding and drought, but also because of elephant attacks,"
Juminto said.

The Jakarta Post observed that tiwul is also consumed by
residents in at least nine villages across Sendang Agung
subdistrict, including Sendangrejo.

Jauhari Zailani, a social observer at the Lampung Media Center
(LMC), said the increasing number of people in the province being
forced to eat cassava showed that the local administration lacked
a "sense of crisis" and "mature plans" to tackle the impact of
the prolonged dry season.

"The Lampung government always claims that villagers here are
already accustomed to tiwul consumption. But in fact, they are
forced to do so because they can't afford to buy rice," he said.

Secretary of the Lampung administration Idrus Djaendar Muda
said his office had launched an assistance program to fight
poverty in 2002, involving around Rp 11 billion.

Another move was the Subdistrict Development Program (PPK)
sponsored by the World Bank, under which dozens of subdistricts
in Lampung receive loans of Rp 1 billion each, he said, adding
that the money was to be distributed to poor villages.

However, Ali Kabul Mahi, a professor from the University of
Lampung who chairs the province's poverty monitoring team, said
the funds frequently missed their intended target.

The programs also have "no clear indicators", prompting many
agencies tasked with the antipoverty drive to apparently work
without coordination, he said.

Data from the provincial administration shows that in 2002 the
poverty rate in Lampung was 2,381,585 people or 476,317 families
of its total population of 6.8 million people, making it the
poorest province on Sumatra island.