Yuichiro Chikamochi (AMDA Headquarters)
Prof. Rampisela (far right) at the time of
Dr. Suganami’s visit to Indonesia in August 2023
Having “Food is the source of life” as its motto, AMDA Food Program is AMDA’s agricultural initiative that was originally launched with the aim of promoting organic farming in the Asia region. Established in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi in 2014, AMDA Malino Farm is the very example that embodies the philosophy of the initiative.
By adopting environment-friendly practices to produce healthy and safe agricultural products, AMDA Malino Farm has influenced local farmers to “go organic” over the years. Likewise, the farm has helped raise awareness towards organic farm produce among consumers by presenting alternatives on the market.
“Organic farming hadn’t taken root in Indonesia when AMDA started the project,” recalls Prof. Dorothea Agnes Rampisela, an agricultural expert who teaches at Hasanuddin University’s agricultural department. Serving as an advisor to the farm from the beginning of the project, she says, “Although it wasn’t a new concept, we rarely heard of organic agriculture at the time except for places like Bali where there were many foreigners.”
Even though organic farm practices were less known at the time, the Malino farmers had to market and sell what they produced. Indonesia has its own farming cooperative such as KUD. However, it has been largely up to each farmer’s effort if one wishes to increase sales and expand distribution routes.
AMDA Malino Farm’s clientele has been mainly supermarkets and Japanese restaurants in city areas frequented by foreigners. Thanks to the conscious consumers in urban areas, the demand for organic produce has been growing in recent years. For the Malino farm, what will become more important from now on is to optimize this trend as a business chance. “Now that we have a relatively solid production base, we need to run the farm on a for-profit basis,” says Prof. Rampisela.
While global warming has already been an enormous threat to food security, the world has come to face a new type of food crises caused by wars. Putting aside organic-versus-non-organic food production issues, global hunger numbers have been constantly on the rise. It means those who live in the developed world will no longer be able to stay indifferent to food security issues either.
AMDA Malino Farm was started by two Indonesian trainees that learned organic farming in Japan. Oddly enough, Japan has a significantly low food self-sufficiency rate despite its advanced farming technology.
What can the Japanese learn from them now? Because of the decades of recession, the Japanese households that need to rely on food donations have been increasing. This is a wide-spread phenomenon that has been occurring in the society where people used to get fed up with having luxurious meals for the excessive abundance they once enjoyed.
On the contrary, a growing number of abandoned farm lands have been observed in Japan’s regional areas due to greying population and falling birth rate. If those who trained the Indonesian trainees see how much the Malino farm has developed, it makes one wonder what kind of sentiments will go through their minds.
What is required now is to produce safe and healthy food crops that are enough to feed everyone on the planet. It is a fair assumption that understanding the trajectory of the Malino farm and the current affairs around the world will help determine the future direction of AMDA Food Program.