City of Swiftlets (Part II)

[this continues where the last post left off...]

...My work also involves going to farming villages, about 45 minutes inland from town. The land is flat and coastal, filled with young oil palm plantations. Oil palms, or sawit, with be the downfall of this place in about twenty years. The plantations are starting up all over the place; everyone wants to start a plantation. Sawit mature very quickly; the fruit is ready to be harvested within 3 years. The problem with sawit is that it stops fruiting after about 10 years. It also depletes the soil of all its nutrients, which means that land that was once used for sawit plantations cannot be used for many years after, until it fallows long enough to be fertile again. As most of the plantations in Jambi are relatively new, this is only beginning to be experienced now. The small farmers beginning their plantations haven’t seen the problems. To make matters worse, sawit plantations support absolutely no biodiversity. The only things that are found in these remarkably unpleasant looking plantations are snakes and pigs.

In stark contrast, there is the plantation crop that thrives in exactly the same conditions as the oil palm: rubber. Rubber forests take a long time to mature; it can take up to 15 years before they are ready to harvest. If they simply let to grow, however, with some other kinds of trees as well, they form a rubber forest that is remarkably similar in shape to natural topical forests. This means, of course, that they support all sorts of biodiversity. Instead of getting pigs and snakes, you get apes, and birds, and tigers, and what ever else you would get in the rainforest. Rubber can also be harvested for far longer, up to 30 years. And it leaves the ground more fertile. But, since it takes a long time to mature, no one is interested in growing it.

So, in 20 years, there are going to be huge swaths of useless land, where the sawit is too old to produce fruit and the ground is not fertile enough to grow anything else.

And, so, yes, I work amongst sawit plantations. Rant over. But remember- if you are ever planning a plantation in Sumatra, consider trying rubber. Some of the people that I work with have sawit plantations, but most are small farmers who grow rice and coffee, and use their front yards’ for vegetables. As in the fishing village, I am working with all female collective action groups. I am looking at characteristics of traditional groups in the area, and comparing them with groups that are currently successful. I am also working with people in the government, to learn what characteristics of groups they are looking for when they give out funding and support. Unlike my concept of collective action when I got into this, rural collective action here is generally government supported, with only a few examples of collective action going against what the government wants. It is not that collective action that works against the prevailing power structure does not exist, but it is generally found in the cities. Wish I knew why.

And so I work with two women’s farmers groups, both supported by the government to grow vegetables, of which there seems to be a serious lack. Unfortunately, it is the rainy season, which means that most of the land that was being used for crops is now under water, and the work has stopped until the dry season. But I am still learning about the ways that they organize their groups, their work, their profits, etc, and comparing this to both what they did traditionally, and what the government wants them to do. To find the answers to these and other thrilling questions, dear reader, you must await the publication of my results.

But I only am spending a few days with the farming groups. Most of my time is still spent in Kuala Tungkal. I am living with a woman from the Agency for Women’s Empowerment, her daughter, her mother, her father, her brother, her brother’s wife, their two kids. It is a crazy place, always full people and energy. I was originally hoping to have a place to myself, where I could have some time for me, but this is what worked out, and I am glad it did. The babies are very cute, and the oldest one, Ayu, just started to walk. The little baby, almost 7 months, is almost crawling. The six-year-old, and her five-year-old cousin who is always over, are impossible, but also impossibly sweet when they want to be. I have my own room, so I am able to get some personal time to type and think when I need it, and am in that way preserving my sanity. It is interesting how cultural the need for personal space and personal time are. It is just not something that is part of the culture here; most people are perfectly happy spending all their time with other people. But I am American, and I need my space. So there.

And that’s that for the moment.