We are very happy to hear that our beloved teacher of our teachers, named Dianto Bachriadi --who do not know him yet? please google him out-- is announced this month to be the recipient of a generous grant for his new, on-going, important academic research, entitled "Fuelling the World with Alternative Progress and Impacts of the Development of Agrofuel Industries of the Rural Communities in SE Asia" from the Asian Public Intelectuals program funded by the Nippon Foundation.
Marvelous, is not it?
You can also see in the
state radio RRI website that along with Dianto there are other five fellows awarded.
Dianto has been 'ordained' by an international organization for rural poor of Brothers of the Human Being (Frères des Hommes) as the founder of the Rolling Stones political party in Indonesia.
Read the story here. And now he is 'ordained' by senior researcher Taufik Abdullah as 'public intellectual'. Are you not happy,
kang Gèpèng? The latest is his nickname.
He wrote different books, useful for you to realise the continuing injustice in Indonesia, like Land Grabbing in Tapos and Cimacan cases in W. Java, in which former president Soeharto unilaterally took over farmers' land for his own political interests ..
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Such question on the title of this post comes from someone who responded to our previous post titled 'Mengenang Masanobu Fukuoka'.
Who among you all would offer an answer? In this forum you are very welcome.
The question is so brief that also seems very clear signal of doubt that hopefully does not suggest rejection of natural farming. A skeptical attitude of course is very useful to encourage us to find the true answer or even try it yourself first before deciding to reject it.
If the background of this question is to urge people to seek mere profits from agricultural activities, of course, the one who pose such question would be disappointed. Today we are so overwhelmed by the lust for profit. Even if they have the heart or even they have that blunt heart, let's say, even if we are aware that agricultural production activities will damage soil structure and fertility they will keep going against our mother nature.
We do not know where this world will end ..
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Please contact, if you want to deliver your aids, helps, relieves, to Mr. Kunkun Herawanto, from Langkaplancar sub-district in Ciamis district. His mobile: 0813-2394 5610.
The impact of that major earthquake in West Java has caused many members of farmer families to forcefully stay out of their houses. Many houses are in ruin, nearly fully damaged, many only half standing. As a result, the dwellers can no longer stay at home. They stay at large in the neighborhood and in dire needs of external supports from you, such as plastic tents, food stuffs, and medicines. These things are in urgent needs now.
Who would help us among you? We are waiting for your helps. Again, this is very urgent.
One among those coordinators who is ready and reliable to accept your help is Mr. Kunkun Herawanto from Langkaplancar sub-district in Ciamis district of W. Java. Please refer your aids to him at his mobile phone number of 0813-2394 5610.
Langkaplancar sub-district consists of more than 10 villages. Based on data and observation gathered officially, four villages are severely hit by the strong earthquake. As many as 15 houses are completely damaged. Their dwellers can no longer stay at their houses. Those who are affected reach about over 1,000 persons, now wandering in the neighborhood.
The four villages of Langkaplancar subdistrict are Karangkamiri, Cimanggu, Jadikarya and Bojong villages.
We are waiting for further information from other subdistricts like Jadimulya, Sukamulya, Bangunkarya, from which we know many members of our farmer association.
Many of the affected people have made on their own efforts such as small huts (saung) for temporary shelters. Yet recent days, it is also raining. Thing get worse then that they definitely need for additional tents for sheltering from rain and for more people to keep the nights in the open air.
Please, consider to lend your aids ..
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By ANUNG
at Tengaran subdistrict, Semarang district
Good evening, dear friends, particularly to this blog’s readers and thanks to the administrator of the sekolahpetani.blogspot.com for reporting our activity.
Since five years ago I have been busy with collecting books, articles, etc. that relate to agricultural potentials. I found then great potentials in the commodity of organic rice. My interest increased to the peak when lack of synthetic fertilizers took place last year of 2008. A reliable information source says that average productivity of rice yield nationally only reaches as low as 4.7 tons per hectare.
I was also informed at the event of the third year of the national rice week in Sukamandi of W. Java in July 2008 about farming technique that helps improve rice productivity. There was introduced the system of rice intensification, apart from “IPAT-BO” (the intensification of aerobic-controlled organic rice cultivation) or other modes of intensification that render yield potential over 10 tons per hectare.
Upon returning from the event, we were stronger motivated to cultivate rice, apart from further emphasis that we were told about the promise of better quality of the rice. Our team agreed to try in Cikampek, Karawang and Subang, along the northern coast of W. Java. Meanwhile I myself organized teamwork in Banten.
Charged with conviction, I offered organic fertilizers to a couple of friends, named Fauzi and Mansyur. We were very convinced that rice plants would be better grown as compared to habits of local growers.
Here are some notes about the yield. In Cikampek, they grow IR64 variety with tillers reaching 120, resulting in 15 tons per hectare. In Subang, they grow gogo rice, i.e. rice variety usually grown in arid areas, resulting in 30 tillers. It happens that the rice plants endure drought about two weeks because they was no rain. However, after rain falls they only spray it with organic (liquid) fertilizers. In Karawang, the amount of rice seeds reaches 243 per panicle, much higher as compared to neighboring paddy that comes up with 127 seeds per panicle. The total yield is 8 tons per hectare.
In Serang district of Banten province, our trial shows a karung bag weighs up to 80 kg, compared to previous weight of 50 kg per bag. We manage to cook and try it. The rice is smooth and mellow. In the suburb of Cilegon town of Banten, rice paddy was prevented from birds’ attacks that savor rice seeds because the panicles are so drooping down for the seed weight. The fleet then attack neighboring paddy. The grower’s name was Tasbani who now already moves back to his home village in Indramayu for his success in Cilegon. In South Banten, petai trees yield much better that they are now paid at three million rupiah (USD 290) per tree as compared to earlier half million rupiah (USD 48) per tree because they apply organic fertilizer.
Those are some stories that we indeed are capable of improving quality and quantity of the yield, yet in small scale though. I do thank to my friend in Yogyakarta who helps us make the organic fertilizers that we do no longer need any synthetic ones. We are convinced that using any organic fertilizers would help us to have better rice yields.
May there be more growers who are willing to apply organic fertilizers on their farms. Let’s support the people who produce their own fertilizers that their yield be improved and spread all over agricultural lands of the country. The more organic farms, the bigger opportunities for the country to supply organic foods as part of organic commodities export opportunities. In the future we would have healthy foods that render our generation brighter facing harder challenges ahead.
Warm greeting of going organic 2010
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Dear friends,
We would like to inform you that at the present our farmers, mostly our own parents, are under hard pressures from the government. Now they are represented by the provincial police institution. Police has accused us unilaterally as damaging our forests with illegal logging.
While in fact, we strongly accuse in turn, ever since we raise this issue, that such bad activities of cutting down wood trees in productive areas of the so-called "productive forest" are actually conducted by other parties, i.e. the state-owned forest companies of Perhutani.
Perhutani actually is the main "land lord" in Indonesia, which is state-owned as compared in term of structural power relation like in the Philippines or many other countries in S. America. We do not have big, fully private land owners like in those counties. Indeed such company may be useful, open to the poor landless peasants, only if it is under people's public scrutiny. They have a lot of money that at any time may be siphoned from the state budget. With such money they may use to improve people life condition, but they may also take advantage from it to put pressure on poor rural population with financing raid in those remote areas.
The latter is what is happening in our areas, particularly Ciamis in W. Java.
Friends, you may follow some of below news stories from local mass media. The stories +tell you about our fight to drive away unsubstantiated accusation of the police. Police should be fair and works of public good, while fighting to justice in law enforcement and not directed its weapons to the rural poor.
We forcefully assert our response to claim back the lands that belong to our ancestors. We have also to remind the state's obligation to respect people's rights to live, to participate in the development projects, to food, to housing, to provide jobs, etc.
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We currently have a problem of how to get slaked lime in an enough amount for almost about 15,000 projected members of the Pasundan Farmers Association (SPP) in Ciamis district. Why only now? Because so far, as we were ignorant of organic farming, we have never used limestone to fill our tilled land to stabilize the pH of the soil. As a result our land is very acidic, made worse by the introduction of chemical fertilizers.
Java's land is generally known to have up to 5 to 4 pH scale. It is no good for plants to grow. People have mostly replaced limestone and compost with different chemical agricultural inputs.
It seems it is nowhere to find limestone. We have checked out several existing limestone minings like in Tasikmalaya district, W. Java, but to no avail. They have closed down in the last years. Unfortunate. May be for they lost under the hegemony of chemical inputs.
The limestones are there, however, and we have yet to find grinding machines considering that we need a quite large quantity and how to carry them to our land. Recycled machines would be best these days. Each hectare of tilled land would need about 400 kilos of ground limestone.
Limestone would definitely be more difficult to find in big towns or cities like Jakarta. Formerly people used burned limestone for construction that you may find it easy at neighboring building materials stores. But now they use more of cements and ignore limestone.
Our friends in Jakarta use eggshell to replace limestone. In fact, eggshell contains 97 percent of calcium carbonate that compost making needs. Where does he find quite amount of eggshell? Yes, they have if you ask ambulant vendors of fried rice in Jakarta. Ask them whenever they almost go home mostly after midnight.
Yet you have to grind them in advance. Stone mortar is good. Why not.
In addition, the eggshell still has protein like covering in the inside part. Supposedly it will enrich you compost. The explanation of Dr. Ken W. Koelkebeck of the Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois on eggshell is indeed very helpful to make us understand what is in eggshell.
You may also use eggshell to create mosaic. See what soopahgrover has made. Very cute.
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Applying the geotool of wikimapia, we are surprised that the area of our school may reach 13.570 hectares or 33.5 acres or 135702 meter square.
We are not used to have such "large" area in our mind, given that most of us were landless. We used to tell that the area is about five hectares. Hope it is not because of a mistake in measuring the area. We will soon check it out with direct field measuring activities.
After all, we are assigned to make this land productive. But so far nothing happens.
We hope with recent training on organic farming, farmers would have more energy to till their assigned land.
Many of us did not know how to properly cultivate plants. And that is why for so long we have ignored ways to treat well our plants. Most of them are actually in distress and in dire need to learn from the scratch. Why not?
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We are quite grateful to find that wikimapia and google map both include our location in that marvelous digital map. You will not, of course, get lost when you come to visit our school. Much would sooner be changed particularly the landscape.
Now we have started to create a new contour-wise terracering in order to keep the environment even better preserved. Hope it would finish sooner than later.
However, you will still have to take a much damaged access street/road to reach our location. The government has yet to finish as they complain to have no public budget to repair the road to quite comparatively remote areas like Pasawahan village.
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We are indeed very sorry for having been long absent in this blog. Now, we have just new drive yet to galvanize however that organic, let’s say, farming has caught our attention. Perhaps it is for the presumably "cost-less" agricultural system that attracts us to adopt. Dearth has pushed us to take such innovative agriculture that still promises us energy to work even harder, unless such zero input agriculture is doomed to fail.
We would like to say we do not care that much with the so-called “organic” agriculture. Because, mostly we could not immediately reach that level of cleanliness from all toxic substances that have infected our land. As you know many chemical fertilizers and pesticides are indeed still around among local farmers in our neighborhood. We saw them using and we could not say and do anything yet, unless we have done and showed a difference to them.
Hopefully they would follow us.
But we have not even started yet actually. But we have been given a marvellous training the other weekend on, let’s say, “natural agriculture”. We learn again, including those already elderly among us, how to make compost out of our abundant hays, grasses, reeds, banana trunks, etc. Please see our humble image beside. We feel embarrassed actually that we only learn it now.
Thanks to our enthusiastic teacher-facilitator with his unflagging spirit. Mas Tanto of Yogyakarta has taught us valuable lessons about how to grow local, indigenous rice varieties that would be suitable with agriculture activities with very low, even almost nothing of external inputs like those chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides.
We learn, in fact, that we have actually made our own land, not deliberately of course, much acidic so that different pests are attracted to approach and damage our plants. One of our teachers, who grows cacao, has found his hundreds of plants, died for leaf louses. He was helpless. It is a pity that we do not know about how to manage land into becoming neutral, not acid or basic, in addition to using our traditional kitchen’s ashes being sprayed on those miserable cacao plants.
Ever since, no one has taught us how to grow plants properly, even elementary principles, such as making compost. It is a pity. Indeed. Does it sound that we exaggerate? We actually just follow the way our parents or grand parents do.
The government appointed field officials for agriculture advice us, instead, to use those cursed chemical stuffs for agriculture, before they sell them to us and take our money. Is it not actually we do not have to pay? In fact, who would finance and “take benefit” from those big manufacturers like Pupuk Kujang, Pupuk Sriwijaya, ect., not to mention yet those imported.
Are we interested in paying them? No. No. Simply no way. Because even now they disguise such hegemony with offering subsidies of fertilizers. My goodness.
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We are very happy to hear that our beloved teacher of our teachers, named Dianto Bachriadi --who do not know him yet? please google him out-- is announced this month to be the recipient of a generous grant for his new, on-going, important academic research, entitled "Fuelling the World with Alternative Progress and Impacts of the Development of Agrofuel Industries of the Rural Communities in SE Asia" from the Asian Public Intelectuals program funded by the Nippon Foundation.
