Gito Wiyono saves rare tubers

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Gito Wiyono, 54, is neither a researcher nor a scientist. He is an elementary school dropout and a humble farmer of Brongkol, a village in the hills of Bantul, some 25 kilometers southwest of here.

What makes him so special is his great concern over the preservation of local edible tubers -- many of which have become rare. In his collection are over 100 species of tubers.

Garut (Arrowroot), talas (Xanthosoma vialaceum), gembili, uwi, suweg, walur, iles, ore, ganyong (Queensland arrowroot), kimpul, sente (Alocasia macrorhiza), jebubug, gadhung, kleci, dorak, and cassava (Ipomoea batatas), and many others whose names are not familiar even to local farmers, are in Gito Wiyono's collection. Most of them come in more than one variety.

"I have 24 different subspecies of cassava," Gito Wiyono, or Gito as he is affectionately called, told The Jakarta Post. He rattled off the list of cassava species he has in the local dialect.

Gito said he started collecting tuber plants in 1995 by nurturing wild tubers growing on his 1,200-square-meter farm, of which he later donated half to be used as the village's public cemetery.

He never had the slightest intention to grow the plant as a way to save it from extinction. He did it out of mere economic reasons: to consume the produce or sell it on the market.

He began planting tubers when he his rice harvest failed because of pests, and he had to work as a gardener at Argodadi's village office. He found that food prices, especially for rice, were expensive at the time.

However, as time went by, he became more and more interested in planting more tubers in his field, especially after realizing that many of them were endangered. He then began hunting for tubers at a number of local markets, and then transplanted them at his farm.

After developing contacts with more people, he has one thing on his mind, and that is to preserve the rare tubers from extinction.

"I have been compelled to do so because I realized that many tuber species were on the brink of extinction. Among the rare ones are those that were once our staple food, especially during the country's difficult times in the 1950s," Gito said.

And that is how he became a tuber farmer, a profession that has won him the nickname Gito Garut, referring to one of the tubers he plants.

In fact, garut has now become Gito's main source of income as he makes this particular tuber the main product of his total 5,000-square-meter farm and the other 1.5 hectares he rents from neighbors.

"Thanks to tubers, I can now buy more farmland and hire some more help for my garut business," said Gito, adding that he also produces garut crackers and powder. Due to his hard work, he can save Rp 400,000 in cash a month.

"I also make crackers and powder from other tubers, including the rare ones, but they are mostly based on order," he said.

The father of six children said the reason why he was proud of what he was doing was that the tubers had made it possible for him to meet and interact with many people.

People from faraway places come to him for the tuber business. They come from Surakarta, Surabaya, Bali, Jakarta, Banjarmasin, Medan and Makassar.

The local agriculture office, too, often invites Gito to share his tuber-planting experiences with other farmers in the region in various discussions. His tuber fields become a kind of laboratory for researchers and students of local universities.

"Sometimes I feel awkward because I didn't finish my elementary schooling. But I'm often asked to give 'lectures' to university students on planting tubers," Gito said.

He said that planting tubers was very easy and required only simple technology.

"What you have to do is just get rid of the wild grass around them and give them some manure," said Gito.

Brongkol, where Gito lives in, is a dry and rocky area. It is difficult to plant anything there unless it is during the rainy season. In the dry season, most plants dry up.

Planting tubers, as Gito has proven, does not require a large quantity of water. They can grow just fine throughout the year, he said.

Gito's experience has given his neighbors a useful lesson. No less than 50 of his neighbors currently make use of their spare fields to plant tubers, mostly garut, and sell the produce to Gito, who will make it into crackers or powder, or just resell it to traders.

"As far as I know, Gito is the only one to preserve tubers in the province, or maybe even the country. I have never known of such a vast collection of tubers as his. He has done a great job in preserving rare tubers," said Nursanti Widi Arimbi, a lecturer at neighboring Wangsa Manggala University's School of Agriculture, which is conducting research at Gito's tuber farm.