Download In the fertile hills behind Indonesia’s mega-capital Jakarta street kids and vulnerable youth are taught how to become organic farmers.
Indonesia has a nine percent unemployment rate and every year more and more young people flood the workforce: almost half of the 16-18 year olds do not go to school or drop out.
The Learning Farm in West Java tries to give some of these boys alternative life skills by teaching them organic farming.
Esther de Jong takes us to visit the learning farm a few hours’ drive from Jakarta.
It’s lunch time and as the boys head out of the fields they sing a song about leaving their mothers and fathers behind to fight against poverty.
One of them is 17 year old Susanto.
Until three months ago he lived on the streets of Yogyakarta.
The gruff looking boy ran away from home to escape abusive parents.
“I stole; I did drugs… all the stuff you do when you live on the streets. I got money to eat, drink, party a little bit. I liked living on the streets, because there is no one to tell you what to do. But little by little, I realized that life on the street is not very safe so I decided to join this program.”
Now he is far from the hustle and bustle of the city.
He wakes up to the sounds of roosters and goats and lives a disciplined life taking care of plants on the organic fields of the Learning Farm.
He is also taught maths, reading, computers and English by local teachers.
The boys produce organic vegetables for their own meals, and sell the remaining produce to a network of individuals, stores, offices and schools.
17-year old Arief is weeding broccoli plants.
The orange coloured mud sticks to his green boots as he squats to pull the tiny weeds from the bed.
It was not his dream to stand knee deep in manure:
“My dreams? Well, when I was a kid, I was not very sensible; I wanted to be a football player. But that never happened! But now, if possible, what I’d like is to be able to provide work for other people.”
All the boys who go to the learning farm are high school dropouts, some of the 45 boys are also juvenile offenders or former drug addicts.
Jiway Tung the director of the Karang Widya the Foundation behind the Learning Farm says they put them through a school of life.
“It’s not just farming; it’s small scale organic farming. It requires commitment to self and to nature. Your main resource is your own critical thinking, understanding of nature’s pattern and rhythms. You can’t just address a problem by just spraying. It all demands that the farmer is an active Partner and participant in this ecosystem.”
And that is the lesson the boys will take with them when they leave.
Eventually, boys with sufficient experience will develop small spin-off farms of their own.
One third of them become an organic farmer, the rest find jobs in other fields.
It’s a relatively small scale project, but already 300 boys have completed the course in six years.
“What we’re talking about is not just transformation of individuals, but we want to create agents of change, in their communities: streets, villages etc. Not only it is our hope, but we strive to that.”
More and more farmers in Indonesia are returning to organic farming.
Although the market for organic produce might be small, there are opportunities: the Learning Farm's customers include the wealthy in Jakarta and it is also negotiating with a large supermarket chain.
Deals like that allow boys like 17 year old Arief to dream about a better future.
“We have to listen to the needs of nature if we want to continue farming. Personally, I feel proud and happy that through my work I can satisfy my own needs as well as the needs of the land. That’s what makes me happy and proud to study organic farming.”
The Learning Farm is a success story in a country with almost ten million unemployed people and where more than 100 million people live on less than two dollars a day.
Mahfur is setting up an organic field that feeds at least 30 children in an nearby orphanage.
He says he joined the organic farm to ease the burden on his parents who are traditional rice farmers with nine children.
“I wanted to change; I didn’t want to keep on going on like before, when I had no discipline. I didn’t want to end up in the streets! What I want is to become a successful organic farmer.”
