Government tries organic farming

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post/Karo, North Sumatra

The government is planning to introduce chemical-free farming as a pilot project in the country's 15 provinces, including the tsunami-hit Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam to help revive its agricultural and horticultural activities.

Ministry of Home Affairs' Directorate General of Village Community Development secretary Puembuan said the farming system -- called the Karo Agro System -- would be ideal for unproductive land or areas that had been ruined by disaster, such as in Aceh.

Puembunan explained that the Karo administration had proposed the system, which combines integrated and comprehensive small- to middle-scale farming to improve farmers' welfare, to the ministry four years ago but it had only just been realized.

"We also want to implement this program in 15 provinces in the country as part as regional autonomy," he said after inspecting a model of the farming system on a 2,500-hectare plot of land in the hilly Puncak 2000 area, Kacinambun village in Tiga Panah district in Karo regency, some 200 kilometers south of Medan.

Once a parched land, the Karo administration turned the area into a fertile farming area in 2000. The model area was set up by farming group Tambar Malem, while the local government helped in modernizing the once traditional farming mechanism.

Karo regent Sinar Perangin-Angin said the program was created as an answer to the problems faced by farmers in Karo.

Back in the 1960s, he said that the agricultural products from Karo monopolized the Singapore market but afterward, the use of chemicals turned the consumers off.

"Until now, the export of agricultural products from Karo is still low. Singapore has diverted the contract to Africa, pushing many of our farmers into poverty. This is our challenge, to help improve their income," Sinar said.

Previously, the regency also supplied agricultural products to Aceh, but inferior products again closed the flourishing market.

"But to fulfill the need for vegetables and fruit in the post- tsunami period, we are sending them from here (to Aceh) through Medan," he said.

Sinar said that the farming system used no chemical fertilizers.

He expressed optimism that the system could help improve the welfare of Karo's farmers, who comprise 80 percent of the regency's 300,000 people.

Farming consultant FX Sapto Wahyu Samudra of Jakarta said the farming system would be ideal for areas like Aceh, where farmland had been destroyed by the tsunami. He added that the system would be perfect in some areas like Aceh Besar and southeast Aceh.

"Although a lot of farmland (in Aceh) was damaged, it won't be hard to implement this farming system since it does not require fertile soil," he said.

Corporate Farming manager Windrayanta Tarigan said the Karo Agro System had been useful in helping farmers to sell their agricultural products -- various vegetables and horticultural products like labu mini (small Japanese pumpkin) and Kabocha (big Japanese pumpkin) -- to Singapore and Japan. The two vegetables are exported to Japan and Singapore at US$6 per kilogram.

The regent said that one of the problems faced by the farmers in selling their products to consumers was the existence of illegal security posts on the roads.

Sinar said that according to reports from drivers taking the products to the market, there were at least 150 illegal security posts operating on the road from Medan to Jakarta. The posts, he said, were allegedly controlled by hoodlums and recalcitrant security officers.

"Whenever they pass a post, the driver has to pay Rp 10,000 (US$1.1). In all, a driver has to spend Rp 900,000 to ensure the products get to their destination. The farmers are complaining about this," Sinar said.