What are the possibilities for organic farming in Indonesia?

By Edhi Martono

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Now that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization officially stated in March its approval of organic farming as productive and that its crop yields may help alleviate world hunger, what can we do here?

Organic farming, for most of us in Indonesia, has little meaning. Sadly, its benefits are understood by only a few who concern themselves with healthy methods of producing basic needs, especially food.

An organic farming system as a rule practices farming without the use of chemicals. Everything is done naturally. Compost, manure or other organic waste are used as fertilizers. No pesticides or other chemicals are applied.

Plant protection techniques largely avoid and repel pests and diseases, instead of killing or decimating them. The end results of this farming method are, hopefully, cleaner and healthier agricultural produce.

Organic farming has no damaging effects on the environment, unlike conventional agricultural practices. Organic farming is done in a more responsible manner, with benefits for humans and their environment.

There are a lot of agricultural practices which are basically organic. In fact, before chemicals became so widely used in agriculture, organic methods were practiced. Organic farming has picked up momentum elsewhere and seems to be the answer to the chemicalization of agriculture. The underlying principle is, if agriculture used to be practiced without any chemicals, why should we now depend so much on them?

Experience also shows that the use of chemicals in the long run guarantees neither high yield nor a healthy product. With this in mind, proponents of organic farming manage their land and farm using methods which are environmentally acceptable. And they found out later that "environmentally acceptable" is equivalent to going back to methods practiced by our ancestors.

The problem is that since the environmentally friendly approach should be just that, it does not pay much attention to yield or production, unlike intensive farming. Organic farming so far is not an economical system to grow crops. It doesn't provide a high yield, which also means it doesn't have a high return. Any return which may be called "profit" comes from its higher product security and lower consumer risk. Only if and when consumers are willing to pay for these advantages will one be able to start talking about profit.

The FAO said that the popularity of organic agriculture was growing fast, especially in western Europe. It is estimated that 2 percent of retail food sold globally is produced organically. The increase of organic food production is also very impressive. Germany plans to increase its organic farmland to 20 percent in the next 10 years, up almost tenfold from today.

But these advances are happening in places where subsistence is not a key word. Developing countries like Indonesia cannot thrive on organic farming as an income-generating activity.

The choice here, for the most part, is feeding the people. This is achieved by both producing and purchasing. The producing option, with regard to organic farming, may not be able to fulfill people's needs.

But not many really believe in organic farming, since the practice, when looked at from the point of view of farmers in the developing world, is the traditional farming method of yore; practices which the farmers were told to abandon in preference for modern techniques, including the heavy use of chemicals, with the promise of high yield.

The promise waned little by little, producing rice with a poor flavor, pests such as the rice brown hopper and disease outbreaks, not to mention farm loans with enormous problems. These events made farmers lose their faith in institutionalized programs, and later, in the program officers.

So organic farming got caught somewhere in the middle. To go back to traditional farming methods, or organic farming, the same effort must be made to convince farmers who have changed their attitude and adopted the intensive farming model. But although there is a growing uneasiness toward rice planting programs for one, the alternative to these programs has never been officially defined.

There have been some implementation programs of the planting system; for, instance there was the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program. This program introduced farming methods which are close to organic farming through environmental consciousness. In the first years of IPM introduction, competent and knowledgeable people were assigned to guide farmers via IPM field schools as the program was managed under an ex-officio board of the IPM program.

Later on, as the board was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, less able and competent people became involved, since the ministry used the "project approach" to the program. Farming practices under IPM were actually a prelude, as some of the farmers trained in IPM continued their quest for organic farming. It was the official efforts and legitimation which were shamelessly lacking, since those in charge did not seem to understand the idea of making agriculture more environmentally acceptable, and they had minimal technical know-how of IPM.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A new paradigm on agriculture, which has been adopted by many outside Indonesia, is still doubted by most Indonesian agriculturists. Too many still believe that modern technology, and not traditional-style farming, is the one and only tool to modernize agriculture. Biotechnology which gives rise to transgenic plants, the tissue culture technique, "safer" chemicals, etc. is the rule rather than the "conventional" way of making agriculture move. The reluctance to adopt new ideas to reform agriculture may come not from ignorance, but from the lack of insight, the inability to reflect on what had been done, and in some cases, just plain absence of technical knowledge.

When one asks the question of "what can we do about organic farming", a paraphrasing of "what can we do about agriculture in Indonesia", unfortunately the official answer is hidden beneath reams of bureaucratic and administrative papers. Let farmers and others who have genuine concern for agriculture in this country answer it with action.

The writer is a lecturer in the School of Agriculture, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta.