Rehabilitating land that was thought lost. Tearfund disaster response worker Kelsey Hoppe writes about life and livelihood restored, three years on from the south Asia tsunami.
Tearfund partners have found new ways to salvage land thought unusable. Photo: Tearfund
Facing the problem
Cot Darat’s name is a misnomer.
In Acehnese, it means ‘elevated land’ but the village of Cot Darat sits at sea level approximately three miles from the Indian Ocean on the western coast of Indonesia. Standing in the village it is immediately evident why the 2004 tsunami was so destructive. The waves rushed over the flat land leaving debris and unarable soil in its wake. The United Nation’s Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimated that the environmental damage caused to natural habitats and ecosystems was USD $675 million. The tsunami overwhelmed vast portions of formerly arable farmland, wells and groundwater with salt water, altering rivers and drainage infrastructures. Aceh’s economy, heavily dependent on agriculture, was devastated, with approximately 160,000 people losing their livelihoods.
Before the tsunami, the farmers of Cot Darat grew the red, hot chillies used in much of the Indonesian cuisine, but in early 2005, when international soil experts tested Cot Darat’s farmland it was deemed ‘unusable’. One international NGO invested 500 million rupiah (roughly £294,117) in re-cropping the land with peanuts only to have it fail completely due to high soil salinity and low fertility. The farmers of Cot Darat gave up farming and began pursuing other livelihoods.
Ahmad Sahir at the chili farm. Photo: Tearfund
Understanding the land
But there was one man who wouldn’t give up. Ahmad Sahir, or Pak Ahmad (‘Mr. Ahmad’, as he is known by the community), was an Agriculture Project Officer for Tearfund’s tsunami disaster management programme, who had a background in organic agriculture and a vision for seeing agricultural lands rehabilitated in Aceh. “The land is a like a person,” he said. “You simply need to know what it needs and then you can find a solution for nearly every possible problem.” Ahmad’s plan was to rehabilitate tsunami damaged lands using organic methods – proper tilling of the soil and organic fertilizers and pesticides.
"...the meaning of the word ‘rehabilitate’ means to put back what was once there in good condition not ‘find something new elsewhere’.”
Women sort the chilis at the farm. Photo: Tearfund
A women’s group was the first to request assistance and agree to try organic agriculture techniques to rehabilitate their land for vegetable farming. Ahmad explained that farmers in Aceh often lacked knowledge in the appropriate use of pesticides or fertilizers. Chemical pesticides were kept in homes and used on plants that did not have disease. Chemical fertilizers were applied but there was limited local knowledge of how much to use or when. Chemical pesticides dangerous to both humans and the environment as they contain elements which take a long time to decompose and remain in the soil to be absorbed by the plants.
However, the introduction of organic fertilizers and pesticides was not immediately embraced as an alternative
because it brought its own complications. The collection of manure for fertilizers is complicated as livestock in Aceh are not normally kept in stalls but rather allowed to roam free. And, it was not enough that Ahmad showed the women’s group how to create organic pesticides out of local items like, onions, ginger, papaya leaves and chillies. They were not convinced that it did not contain chemicals until he drank it. “The women,” he laughs. “Are far more conscientious and inquisitive than the men. They watch their crops like mothers do children.”
But when the women’s project did succeed the farmers in Cot Darat allowed Tearfund and the women’s group to conduct a small pilot project on a portion of their land to determine if chilli production could also succeed using the same techniques.
Pak Sarbini and his son harvesting chillies. Photo: Kelsey Hoppe/Tearfund
Chillies are a notoriously finicky crop that will not thrive unless the soil maintains a specific pH balance. The soil in Cot Darat needed an overall increase of one full point in order for the chillies to grow. This increase was accomplished by tilling the soil for adequate aeration and by the addition of lime which helped raise the pH. Simple drainage systems were dug, and the farmers worked the soil, watched and waited. Amazingly, Ahmad never tested the soil after the introduction of the lime but rather worked with the farmers using traditional techniques to determine whether the land was suitable for planting. This meant that after Tearfund left the farmers were not reliant on technology unavailable to them.
In the two months that they were rehabilitating the pilot plot of land, Ahmad helped the women conduct trainings with the other farmers on the making and use organic fertilizer and pesticides. He, and the women’s group, advocated the benefits of not using chemicals to reduce the risk to farmers and their families.
Re-establishing livelihoods
The link between the economy and the environment is strong in this rural community where so many livelihoods are dependent on natural resources which are, in turn, highly susceptible to disaster. This necessitated a focus on disaster risk reduction and environmental awareness programme that hoped to help people ‘build back better.’ Throughout all of his projects Ahmad led informal trainings with beneficiaries on how to build a business, savings groups, and management so that, in the case of another disaster, they would be able to re-establish their livelihood more quickly than in the past.
When the first chilli harvest using organic methods produced an abundant crop the farmers in Cot Darat began using the same methods on larger pieces of their former land. The overall production costs using organic methods proved to be considerably cheaper than when they used chemicals.
Going organic
While there is an organic agriculture campaign in Indonesia organic farming techniques not yet widely embraced. Ahmad, however, is convinced that the campaign will steadily gain a foothold and surrounding communities of Cot Darat have already sent representatives to observe the techniques of both land reclamation and the production of organic fertilizers and pesticides.
When asked why he didn’t join the experts who initially advised the community find land elsewhere or new livelihoods he shakes his head, “our job was to rehabilitate agriculture and the meaning of the word ‘rehabilitate’ means to put back what was once there in good condition not ‘find something new elsewhere’.”