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| A GREEN TIPPING POINT (By Ibu Kat)
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Like many of Ubud's young men, Gede sports a stylish red streak in his hair, ear plugs and smart Tshirts. His family sent him to Ubud for high school and he remained after graduation, finding a little work here and there and hanging out with his friends.
Then he took up with D, a foreign woman with a bee in her bonnet about organic agriculture. Gede grew up in a village where almost everyone was a farmer, and they all used chemical inputs as a matter of course. He thought D was a bit cracked on the subject, but realized that something had to change in his village.
"The people grow vegetables to sell, but it's very uncertain," he explains. "The prices fluctuate and the chemicals are getting expensive. Farmers are poor. I never wanted to be a farmer, that's why I stayed in Ubud."
About this time he met Chakra, a young man who had grown up on a 40 are farm just south of Ubud. Chakra remembered the abundant wildlife in the rice fields when he was a child, how he hunted for frogs and eels and picked medicinal plants in the sawah. For 20 years the land had been used to grow rice and sweet potatoes. The fields had never been left fallow in that time or received any fertilizer except for chemical inputs. Gradually, the animals and wild plants disappeared along with the rich biomass that had nurtured them. By the fall of 2005, the rice crop was failing. Most of the crop was brown and burnt-looking a month before harvest.
Chakra had been working with IDEP Foundation since the tsunami, and he'd been deeply involved with IDEP's permaculture training centre in Aceh since its establishment. "I really feel that permaculture is the solution for our land," he told me. "My father and I want to restore it to the condition it was in before he started using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We plan to gradually make the whole farm organic."
Chakra has now almost finished training as a Green Hand, or professional permaculture trainer, at IDEP's GreenHand Field School about 50 km south of Bandah Aceh. On a trip back to Bali, he and Gede met for the first time. Within hours, he had inspired Gede with his own passion to restore his family's land and grow wholesome organic food. A few weeks later, Gede found himself on an airplane headed to Aceh to take a two-week Village Design Course at the school.
This was a giant step for Gede. The young man from a small town faced a leap of faith in farming techniques and a leap in culture and experience. "I was afraid to go," he says frankly now. "My family was afraid for me too. All we hear about in the media is how dangerous and violent Aceh is. We had a special ceremony in my village so I would be protected. I'd never flown alone before, and the culture in Aceh is very different. I was lonely and disoriented for the first few days."
But very soon Gede discovered that he was in a safe and bountiful place. His Acehnese companions were friendly and helpful, he swam in the unpolluted waters of a rushing river, caught fresh fish and worked in the gardens. He learned to grow vegetables without chemical fertilizers or insecticides and how to design toilets, houses and even a market. He learned about nutrition and the diseases caused by chemical exposure, and how to do community mapping. Australian permaculture trainer Steve Cran inspired him with his broad base of grassroots knowledge gleaned from years of teaching in Timor. "I'm different now. A year ago I was bored, I wasn't interested in gardening. After Aceh, I'm determined to return to my family's land and start organic farming." It's true that Gede is different; he has a new air of confidence and energy, and drives to his village almost every day now from Ubud.
But his enthusiasm was met with suspicion and obstacles. The farmers in his village told him he was crazy, that he could never grow crops without pesticides. Offers of land were withdrawn. Gede is left with 25 are of his father's land as his demonstration plot. "I've already planted lots of soybeans as green manure," he declares. "My goal is to grow organic red rice. Currently it sells for the same price as white rice in the village, so I need to find a good market for it. When I can prove that organic food sells for more, others will want to learn."
Gede and Chakra are a new generation of Balinese farmers -- young, educated in organic growing and passionate about the land. After their time with the GreenHand Field School, they have the skills and knowledge to create chemical-free food security in their communities and restore rice land exhausted by decades of intensive chemical farming. But only when they can demonstrate the profitability of organic growing will others follow their example. And they need support in making the transition and finding markets for their produce.
It was heartening to learn that Bali's new Tourism Board Chairman Pak Bagus Sudibya is a strong supporter of Bali's traditional rice culture. He believes that introducing profitable, non-chemical farming will attract younger Balinese back to their ancestral land and maintain the legacy of green rice fields which is such a draw for tourists. "The world is spending millions on organic products," he pointed out in a recent interview in Bali & Beyond. "Singapore is among the big spenders, and the cargo holds of flights to Singapore from here are about 60% empty. The market is certainly there."
Maybe this is Bali's tipping point, where bored young men are tipped off the sidewalks back to their land, supported by an enlightened Tourism Board and organizations such as IDEP. Lead on, Chakra and Gede. May a legion form behind you.
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Thanks to everyone
who made these
projects possible!
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Breaking ground at the new GreenHand Field School in Aceh.
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Relaxing between activities
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The GFS is located in a beautiful part of Aceh.
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then apply what they have learned.
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Trainees learn theory for half each day.
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Trainees learn to make a banana pit.
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Trainees work together to build a clay oven and shelter.
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Before the tsunami, this was a fishing village.
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Acehnese curently living in refugee camps will learn to grow their own food. Villagers clear the site in a cash-for-work program
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