Joice Juliana
IPMI International Business School
Amelia Naim Indrajaya
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PT East West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO) is the first integrated vegetable seed company in Indonesia which produces high quality vegetable seeds through plant breeding. The idea of urban farming initiative is to help build the resilience of urban families and communities cultivating vegetable seeds in limited space. By doing so, they are able to provide fresh vegetables for their consumption or sell the vegetables to fellow neighbors or to the market and make money out of it.
The development of cities has required more development of vertical housing where access to land is a major barrier for urban residents who want to enter the agricultural sector. Urban families are used to eat store-bought vegetables and fruits which often came with unseen pesticides used during the farming process. Farming in the city to provide food sufficiency was not common and had never been practiced in Indonesia.
Fortunately, EWINDO has viewed that growing vegetables in the city is possible and has huge potential opportunity for would-be farmers wanting to become part of the movement. Urban farming will become a noticeable opportunity for a target business.
In doing urban farming, one of the modesl or alternatives, other than opening field gardens, is the hydroponics using water as the media. Basically, no need to use a sophisticated module and everything can be made by farmers themselves, the seeds can be purchased in many food stores. They can learn from You Tube, an application that is wildly available in Google play. One thing that is interesting, which is also practised in Marunda, is that you can use waste of mineral bottle. Cut it into half, put the top of the bottle downward and put in the fuse from linen so it can transport the water to the soil or rock wool as the media for the respiration. Basically for hydroponics, you only need a pipe or bucket, soil, rock wool, water, sunlight and the nutrient solution. It’s very simple.
The very recent way is by using LED bulb to replace sunlight. Even if families are not able to plant vegetable pots on the balcony, they can use one of their rooms to be the garden using the LED bulb to replace sunlight. They can also make a vertical garden through the wall if only a small size of area available. By doing so, everyone everywhere can be a farmer. Grow vegetables with the limitation of living in the city.
In a way, urban farming is a disruption of traditional way in providing food for urban residents. This has transformed the modest unskilled growers to trained urban farmers. It creates a smart and efficient agriculture in the urban environment.
The condition of an increasing urban population and concern over the food insecurity threat by 2050 has urged EWINDO to do something different. EWINDO's Marketing Manager, Ignatius Agung Pratama said that as a high quality vegetable seeds company, they feel the responsibility to initiate a movement to prepare urban people to be resilient in securing vegetables need for urban families.
Ignatius Agung explained: ‘The inspiration came from the situation where there is a tendency of growing trend from urban people in the city. Urban people do not have big size of land at their garden and there is a lot of unused land in Jakarta because they’re prepared for future investment. Based on that, EWINDO believed there is a potential market for urban farming business to grow in the next 10-15 years. The consumption of vegetables is going to be increased but the land prepared to produce the vegetables is going to be less and less because Indonesia is becoming more industrialized, people especially youngsters tend to work in factory and offices. That is the background of EWINDO and why it has developed the urban farming and provide seeds package that can be purchased in the well-known supermarket chain such as Superindo and Ace Hardware. This coming April, EWINDO is going to cooperate with Alpha Midi, so it’s going to be available in over 600 stores all over Indonesia provide urban farming seeds.’
Mr. Agung explained in details that the way they see CSR as part of the business model in EWINDO. Basically CSR is the trigger to seek whether the opportunity is there for the company to develop a market. One case is developing urban farming market. It was triggered by their CSR activities in many slum areas and saw a lot of people live below the poverty line. It was very difficult for people who lived in rural area and coastline like in Marunda to get access to fresh vegetables. This was where they see an opportunity to develop urban farming by providing urban farming seeds and training to the people in the area.
That is how EWINDO, as a vegetable seed company in Indonesia, developed their urban farming initiative. EWINDO was moved to support the people living in coastline to have self-empowerment to cultivate vegetables. They approach with CSR at the very beginning, to introduce, educate and train people on how to grow vegetables in limited space or by hydroponic approach for their consumption. That was the first initiation. Now the people are becoming more sophisticated because some of them already encouraged opening their own open field garden with over 200 m2 at the back of the cluster C apartment Marunda.
With EWINDO’s urban farming campaign such as demonstration plot (demo plot) challenge in cluster C Marunda, family or a community of several families owned and plant their own vegetables. They can also ask fellow people living in the communities to work with them to share the benefit of fresh vegetables produced. This is a communal based activity, people can see one another, encouraged by the success of their neighbor. It becomes contagious in positive way.
The vision of growing food in the city areas or known as urban farming is not only suitable but also has very high potential to develop. From 10.3 million hectares of yard available in the country, 30% are located in the cities. Urban farming also contributes to health and food security. Currently, the consumption of vegetables and fruits per person per year only 40 kg, while Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommended a consumption of 73 kg. Therefore, EWINDO is encouraged to make every location and everyone able to grow foods themselves because everyone should have access to the healthy and affordable foods that has grown naturally to get sufficient nutrition.
EWINDO’s Marketing Manager, Ignatius Agung explained in the interview that currently Jakarta has 11,800 hectares of land and 78% of it already becoming housing area. Cities become more crowded and people live in a very clustered area. The urban farming contributes to health and food security by increasing the availability of fresh produce to people living in urban environments to fight urban food insecurity. Not only that, with urban farming, people in the city are becoming more independent, able to produce vegetables by themselves and no longer an object of the so-called price hike.
The government of Jakarta has initiated relocation of people living in slum or poor areas to more vertical urban area such as Marunda. The Marunda apartment (rusun in Indonesian) is a low cost subsidized apartment located in North Jakarta. Introducing urban farming and engaging the people into the practical training of growing foods will help them to get skill set which in turn enable them to grow vegetables at their urban garden for self sufficiency.
The practice is also environmentally sustainable, as agricultural products cultivated within city limits require less energy to produce and transport. Urban agriculture also contributes to city-wide beautification and community building.
For the community in Marunda :
According to Ignatius Agung, the pace started from EWINDO doing its Corporate Social Responsibility to empower people lived in Marunda to grow vegetables by themselves for their consumption or even to sell vegetables to fellow neighbors. Now they become the customers of EWINDO. That is how advance the stage they are now in cultivating vegetables, it is no longer only a hobby.
The people are able to reap what they have already sowed and make money out of it. For example one plant of hot pepper, if planted in a right way with good training from EWINDO, can produce one kg of chili pepper. A family may only need few fruits of chili pepper for sambal (home-made hot pepper sauce), the rest can be sold to the fellow neighbors and when chili pepper price soaring to Rp 125,000 per kg like what happened recently in Indonesia, they can provide chili pepper for themselves or make that amount of money by selling it to fellow neighbors.
They did not have to use seeds from EWINDO but since they have already proved the quality of EWINDO’s vegetable seeds, they use them to continue growing vegetables. Hence, it is a bonus for EWINDO because while doing the stewardship for urban people developing urban farming, it also adds new customers for their business.
For EWINDO :
In the interview, Ignatius Agung explained that EWINDO has established in Indonesia for over 26 years, yet for so long it had only focused to develop agriculture in Indonesia, in particular to traditional farmers all over Indonesia. Now, EWINDO wants to capture the possibility of potential business in urban areas by developing urban farming.
Marunda is one of the cases : one apartment tower consists of 300 to 500 units which means about 300 to 500 households reside there. If one household is able to plant one or two type of crops, there will be 500 or 1,000 seeds being sold to that tower. Marunda also has many towers and they are going to develop more, hence there is potential business to capture.
At the moment, Marunda also has many unused land and if household wives are able to advocate and negotiate with Marunda apartment management to open more land for their economic development, it is also a market for EWINDO. But Mr. Agung emphasized that they do not see Marunda solely from business perspective, they want to empower the low-income people lived in Marunda to be resilient.
Nonetheless, living in the city is now going to be more vertical. EWINDO is now being approached by Agung Podomoro, one of the biggest apartment developer in Jakarta or even Indonesia for Gading Nias and Kalibata City apartment project. EWINDO is partnering with them to provide facilities for hydroponics as well as open field urban farming garden and rooftop garden. This is a business potential of urban farming to tap in. It was started with demo plot challenge, now they become one of the biggest customer.
This year is the third year for EWINDO doing urban farming business model. To measure the success of urban farming, the sales of urban farming vegetable seeds at supermarket chain can be used as the indicator. The first year, EWINDO sold 250,000 seeds pouch and it increased to more than 650,000 seeds pouch in the second year. If we assume one seeds pouch for one family, meaning it has already 650,000 families purchased EWINDO’s seeds pouches. For 2017, it has very aggressive target to sell 1.2 million seeds pouch to urban people. It means there will be 1.2 million families exploring the benefits of the seeds and grow the vegetable in their garden. That is the opportunity that EWINDO sees: urban farming is a good business while at the same time it enables people to be resilient in securing required fresh vegetables.
In the midst of increasing population in the city, urban farming has been benefiting families to grow fresh vegetables by themselves. This is changing the urban lifestyle to healthy food eaters. It also enables urban families to be self sufficient of the required fresh food.
The emergence of urban farming community also strengthening the relationship between city residents. Previously well-know for their self-centered and egocentric behaviour, city residents now are becoming more societal, they work and practice together and help each other with the knowledge or experience they have in practising urban farming. This has transformed the modest unskilled growers to trained urban farmers.
Urban farming is also environmentally sustainable, as agricultural products cultivated within city areas require less energy to produce and transport to the market from villages. As development in the city such as buildings, roads, toll roads, malls, apartments has made the city become less green. Urban farming helps to make a city-wide beautification with its green space environment and contributes to reducing global warming.
Apparently, Marunda is one complex case where EWINDO becomes more involved in community-based development. Recently EWINDO and its partners launched a program called MURIA (Marunda Urban Resilience in Action). Mr. Agung said that Muria program is basically a collaboration with partners like NGO and donors to help developing the resilience of urban people live in Marunda. EWINDO plays a pivotal role in encouraging people to cultivate their vegetable in a right way while the partners advocate household wives in Marunda community to be encouraged to go to the field to plant themselves and to ask management of Marunda apartment to open the land that is not being used so they can make small garden and grow vegetable in it.
From that on, EWINDO saw the importance of collaboration to fill the gap of the thing they are lacking to go further. With the Muria program, EWINDO and partners are collaborating in one powerful mission and action.
MURIA is basically to empower people live in Marunda to be resilient in a more holistic aspects. It is not only providing good nutrition of vegetable planting but educating them to be aware of safety issues related to their coastline living area. Everything in Marunda is now well-mapped, people are able to source online the location of flood, safe place area to go if natural calamity take place.
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