Rice-fish rice fields in the Nanggala Indigenous Community
Indigenous Peoples, People's Organizations, and Local Communities have a major role in preserving their environment, especially ensuring that their food system practices are maintained. They realize that all components of the ecosystem in their area must be maintained, ensuring the sustainability of life for generations including: farming, gardening, gardening, with techniques that they believe in from generation to generation.
One of the important practices they maintain is local seed breeding. Seeds are not just plant seeds, but are part of cultural heritage, collective knowledge, and community strategies in adapting to changes in nature and climate. Through a natural and selective breeding process over tens to hundreds of years, these communities have produced plant varieties that are suited to local geographic conditions, resistant to pests and diseases, and have high nutritional value and taste. These seeds are passed down from generation to generation and support food sovereignty at the local level.
Riska Ayu Purnamasari (Floresa.co, 25/11/2024), from the Faculty of Agrotechnology, Gadjah Mada University reminded Indonesia with its diverse natural and cultural conditions that food standardization through seed standardization cannot be forced. From an environmental perspective, local seeds are more adaptable to the environment, and have the ability to withstand pests and drought, because they have adapted to local conditions and climate. If there is a massive pest attack, local corn productivity may decrease but is more resilient than hybrid corn.
Communities have been faced with a situation that is not in their favor regarding efforts to maintain biodiversity, especially in terms of seeds. As is being fought for by the Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI) which is trying to encourage the Indonesian Government to ratify the Declaration of Human Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas/UNDROP). This declaration views farmers as having the right to seeds which includes protection and traditional knowledge, as well as decision-making related to the conservation and use of genetic resources for food and agricultural crops up to seed policies and protection of plant varieties that take into account the rights and needs of farmers.
In Indonesia, the seed policy after the enactment of the 2020 Job Creation Law was changed in such a way that it became more open to the import of plants, animals, including hybrid seeds or superior seeds, originating from abroad. The regulation removed the old policy that protected and developed local seed cultivation. According to the SPI report in Report on the Situation of Indonesian Farmers' Human Rights (December 2020), this policy does not support farmers' independence in seeds at all. The ideal of realizing farmers' independence in seeds will be difficult to achieve if the government does not take policies that protect farmers.
This is exacerbated by the fact that most farmers in Indonesia are small farmers, farmers who only control less than 5.000 m2 or 0,5 hectares of land. According to a study by the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) in Agrarian Annual Report (December 2023) During the period from 2013 to 2023, there has been an increase in the poverty of farmers in Indonesia by 2,62 million poverty-stricken farmers, or an increase of 18,54 percent from 2013. This is due to evictions and seizures of agricultural land for infrastructure development and extractive investments that force land conversion. This problem contributes greatly to the problems faced by Indigenous Peoples, farmers, and rural communities. Losing land causes them to lose their local traditions and knowledge.
Nusantara Fund promotes sustainable production and consumption practices that are the core principles of Indigenous Peoples, People's Organizations, and Local Communities. Primarily, supporting communities to increase their capacity in wiser resource management systems, and restoring landscapes affected by ecological crises. Nusantara Fund has supported several Indigenous Peoples, People's Organizations, and Local Communities initiatives that have successfully carried out local seed breeding to traditional, multicultural, and natural agricultural practices. The world faces a great risk of losing native seeds if there is no serious effort to re-cultivate them. This loss will have a direct impact on the sustainability of the food system in the future.
PPSS women are weeding the land
Women's Role in Maintaining Local Seeds Connected to Their Traditional Life
Efforts made by Indigenous Peoples, People's Organizations, and Local Communities to maintain traditional agricultural traditions begin with their strategy to restore local seeds. It is not uncommon to find changes in the landscape in their areas that automatically eliminate agricultural traditions, including the types of local seeds that have been used for generations. In this case, women have a big role in maintaining their ancestral traditions by transferring their knowledge to the next generation.
As done by Indigenous Women in Wologai, Ende, East Nusa Tenggara. Now they are trying to restore local plant seeds that are now starting to disappear from their customary areas. Wologai Indigenous Women realize how important it is to restore these local seeds as part of their ancestral traditions. The seeds that are prepared include dryland rice seeds, local corn, beans, millet, cassava, sweet potatoes, koko, wow, home (coconut cassava), taro, dirty (hair yam), cucumber, iron pumpkin, Japanese pumpkin, chili, eggplant, and winged bean. These seeds even have a ritual before being planted and there is also a special song. The harvest is only for food and some is set aside for seeds. Not only setting aside the existing seeds, they managed to find from other villages local seeds that were lost such as sorghum, jali-jali, sesame, wadeand magpie (gotu kola) to be developed from the results of the search for seed knowledge from local history. They also took the initiative to document it in written form. The knowledge is immortalized and ensured to be maintained for the sustainability of the lives of their next generations.
As in Wologai, a women's group in Namblong, Papua which has an organizational unit called ORPA (Organisasi Perempuan Adat) Namblong is involved in advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples who are being threatened by the presence of a large-scale palm oil plantation industry in their customary territory. This women's group has a strategy to consolidate their movement through noken, a traditional Papuan bag. They took the initiative to plant 164 mahkota dewa, orchid, and melinjo seedlings which are the raw materials for making noken. The seedlings were planted in the gardens and yards of each member's house so that they no longer had to walk far into the forest. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to find these raw materials in nearby forests, after most of their customary territory was occupied by palm oil plantations. This initiative is also to foster interest among young people in learning and making noken. Namblong Indigenous Women want their children to be able to continue making noken in the future as an inseparable part of Papuan identity and also have added economic value that does not damage the environment.
Rice-fish rice fields in the Nanggala Indigenous Community
Back to Traditional Farming Practices and Local Seeds
Farmers in Mount Anten and the Kasepuhan Citorek Indigenous Community, Banten, always practice traditional farming in planting dryland rice without using pesticides and are able to survive on dry land. They even have a collective rice storage barn called the boat which can store rice for up to 50 years. They consider rice not only as a source of food, but also as a spiritual symbol and a major component in their collective life. Rituals and traditional customs are an inseparable part of every process from planting to harvesting rice. Emphasizing the importance of togetherness and gratitude to nature.
Likewise, the Nanggala Indigenous Community in North Toraya is trying to revive the practice of mina padi farming, an integrated farming system that combines carp cultivation in rice fields. So this type of farming reduces the possibility of chemical fertilization and also has a double yield of rice and carp harvested in one area. Carp is an important component in daily dishes and rituals such as the "Rambu Tuka" traditional ceremony. Now they have a new strategy to reactivate the practice of rice planting and fish farming on Indigenous Community land using the mina padi method that has been abandoned previously.
The maintenance of traditional agricultural practices that have been passed down from generation to generation is often also faced with situations of regional destruction caused by the expansion of large-scale companies. Expansion causes direct changes in the landscape, disrupting their traditions that are close to nature.
The same thing happened to the farmer group in the Dieng Plateau, Central Java. Potato farmers there face difficulties in obtaining superior seeds to meet market demand. They are trying to restore quality potato seeds from local varieties with modern technology, the mini cutting method from tissue culture developed organically. Farmers in Dieng together with Rukun Tani Indonesia are developing greenhouse specifically to the standards of the Seed Supervision and Certification Center (BPSB). Greenhouse able to accommodate 2 thousand mini cuttings that will produce 15 thousand virus-free potato seeds. The potato seeds will be planted and can produce 16 tons of potatoes and 4 tons of seeds. In addition, a seed cooperative was formed to ensure sustainable access for Dieng farmers to access quality potato seeds at affordable prices.
As experienced by the community in Jambo Reuhat Village, East Aceh, who are facing an agrarian conflict with a large-scale palm oil company. Most of their areas have been burdened with palm oil plantation permits. This has caused the community's tradition of farming with local plants to fade. The Jambo Reuhat Village community took the initiative to restore the tradition of farming with local seeds and multicultural plants by planting 21 thousand seeds consisting of 10 thousand coffee seeds, 1.500 nutmeg seeds, 5 thousand cocoa seeds, 1.500 papaya seeds, 2 thousand petai seeds, and a thousand pepper seeds distributed to rehabilitate farmer group land and customary forest areas covering 81 hectares.
The same thing was experienced by the Suryakencana Sukabumi Farmers Brotherhood (PPSS), which is struggling to regain its land that has expired the Cultivation Rights (HGU) permit for a large-scale tea plantation. In addition to strengthening the capacity of members through agrarian reform education, PPSS realizes the importance of having a planting strategy to strengthen farmer ownership by increasing the productivity of ex-HGU plantation land. Most of the ex-HGU land is not managed properly and they are worried about the dangers of flooding and landslides because it is in a mountainous area. Therefore, PPSS members are committed to restoring and continuously caring for their land by maintaining large trees and planting 3 thousand avocado seedlings distributed in 9 member villages.
The eight communities above are just a small part of the local initiatives that ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem in their respective regions. Maintaining local soil, water, seeds, and plants are the main ecosystem components that support the sustainability of local traditions. And farmers are not only objects for farming without farmers, namely consumers of uniform hybrid seeds from seed entrepreneurs at prices that are difficult for farmers to afford. Community-scale contributions like this have a role in larger environmental recovery to support the creation of more equitable and effective solutions to environmental and food crises.