Dozens of vegetable farmers in Malino, South Sulawesi, can only stare, sigh, or even laugh at their fate. They can’t fight the rapid changes in the weather. But they also don’t know where to turn for help.
This story highlights the vulnerability of the local farmers. They can only wait for miracles. They are just a small fragment of this country’s society, but together they generate trillions in revenue.
Daeng Ba’rang
Meet Daeng Ba’rang (53 years old), a vegetable farmer who lives in Batu Lapisi Dalam neighborhood, Malino Village, Tinggi Moncong Sub-district, Gowa Regency, South Sulawesi. Ba’rang sits in the living room of his walled house. It is about six meters wide and 20 meters long. He lives there with his wife, Mina (55 years old), and his only daughter who is 25 years old.
He owns 200 square meters of land. He grows various types of vegetables on that land, from cauliflower and mustard greens to cayenne pepper. Every day the family tends to the plants diligently, clearing the grass and watering them. For decades the land had yielded, as the profit was collected the house was the result. This time they have remodeled the living room to make a concrete cast frame.
Two relatives helped without pay. Ba’rang says many skilled builders in his village work on government projects through contractors. The farmers usually work as construction workers during the dry season as a seasonal job, earning 150,000 rupiahs per day.
“If I have to pay them at a standard rate fee, there’s no way I can build a house,” Ba’rang said, pointing to the two men. “In our village, we still help each other out. I only need to provide the materials, buying them little by little at a time.”
Ba’rang had planted cauliflower, which was three months old and should have been harvested in a month but was already failing. The leaves of the vegetable were white-spotted and filled with holes.
In the afternoon before the call to Friday prayers, in mid-September 2023, the three men finished mixing the cement and then took turns pouring it with small buckets into an elongated box with steel bars inside. Afterward, they sat down to eat together. The meal was a delicious chicken soup, but there were no vegetables. They smile because this is what Ba’rang and the other farmers are facing. “It’s been a difficult year,” he says simply.
Across the region, vegetable farmers struggle. Their crops have failed due to the long drought. It has been four months since the region received any rain. The farmland is cracked. Dust is flying all over. The river has dried up.
Ba’rang had planted cauliflower, which was three months old and should have been harvested in a month but was already failing. The leaves of the vegetable were white-spotted and filled with holes. It was certain that the fruit would not come out and could no longer be saved. “Just pull it out later,” he said.
The initial cost of the plant was 10 million rupiahs. The financier will receive a portion of the profit from the harvest along with a return of capital. Mina, his wife, has to turn her head around to meet their living expenses.
This year hundreds of farmers in the area gambled on by planting vegetables in July. They hope the weather will change. The planting season, with its customary weather cycles, is now unpredictable. Farmers in places far from policymaking centers, who have relied on centuries of local knowledge, are losing out. During the week the author travelled to various corners of the region, the farmers in the fields were just the same age as Ba’rang. The young people who enter the agricultural sector prefer to be liaison traders rather than farmers.
February 2023 was a year of “tears” for farmers in the region. Thousands of hectares failed to harvest.
According to their traditional knowledge, it should have rained occasionally in July. However, until this September, it has been dry, so their predictions were wrong. They wanted to stop planting, but they had no choice. Ba’rang, who planted vegetables in July, hoped for a miracle, but it didn’t happen.
February 2023 became the year of “tears” for farmers in this region. Thousands of hectares of land failed to be harvested. Potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, and tomatoes rotted on the trees. In contrast to this long drought, it rained at that time with high intensity.
Puang Jari’
Puang Jari’ (48 years old), who lives in Tonasa village, Tombolo Pao sub-district, remembers what happened in February while shaking his head with his shoulders slightly raised. “We had just finished harvesting tomatoes for one day, and the next day we would harvest another field,” he says. “But before noon, the rain suddenly came and didn’t stop. The wind also became strong. All the tomato trees fell. The stems were broken. There was nothing else to do.”
The rain continued until March. The following month the rain subsided. Then the heat became intense. The land was cleared again. He then planted curly chilies. The river near his land was still flowing well enough. He pumped it and made a pipeline for the water sprinkler. However, by July the weather became more extreme and very hot.
The water in the river began to diminish. Some creeks even dried up. The big rivers were also almost barren. “Because there was very little water in the river, the ants could cross it walking,” he said.
After being hit by the rains at the beginning of the year. Now farmers are facing a drought that they don’t know when it will end. “The previous dry season was not as hot. Now all the grass has died. It never happened before,” he said.
“If there is no rain until September, many farmers will go out of business. Maybe me too.”
Puang Jari’ can only hope that nature will get better again. He doesn’t know why climate change is happening. He never understood how the earth’s temperature increased and made the polar ice caps melt. What is certain is that for him and thousands of other farmers, the drought has made it impossible for their crops to grow properly. Crops are dying and the emergence of pests is getting more massive. “Because of the heat, more and more people are selling pesticides. So many,” he said.
Puang Jari’, in mid-September 2023, at around 10 AM, was at his plot of land. He and his workers were harvesting curly chilies. At first, he was reluctant to talk to those of us who visited him. “I thought people were promoting pesticides again,” he said with a laugh.
He stopped as we walked between the chili plants, which were about one meter high. His hand lifted the top of the plant whose leaves had become curly. “This is already dead. I don’t know what else to use to save it,” he said.
On the terrace of his garden house, Puang Jari’ serves coffee and cakes. All the while, his hands were busy wagging, shooing away hundreds of flies. The appearance of the flies was also a question for him. In previous years, flies were not insects that could upset him. “Where did they come from? I don’t know. They appeared and suddenly there were many,” he said. “In the past, if there were flies, it might have been because of coffee spills or food scraps, but not many, only dozens. Now it’s hundreds, even thousands.”
In the late afternoon, Puang Jari’ began transporting the curly chili harvest to the roadside. There are dozens of bags lined up. “Right now, the maximum harvest is 200 kg. Before the drought, the harvest could be a ton every year,” he said.
Each bag of curly chili peppers costs 10,000 to 20,000 rupiahs per kilogram with each bag weighing 10 kg. Prices in September (at the time of reporting) were far below normal. By mid-October (at the time of writing), the price had risen from 25,000 to 28,000 rupiahs per kilogram. Puang Jari’ said that the price was already quite normal. However, the normalized price was not followed by the decreasing productivity of the crop.
“Those are about to be sent to Sorong, Papua. My customers there have been calling and asking for them,” he said. “They get angry sometimes, but I say, ‘Maybe only God can help to save this situation.’ So, when the chilies get to Sorong, they become deflated and some are black. Meanwhile, a healthy chili fruit [can last] up to one week. It is big and stays in good shape.”
Sandi
Sandi (40 years old), another farmer, added, “If this continues, how are we going to live?” he said. He was sitting on the sacks of mustard greens harvested by his family. His farm is about 500 meters away. His body is still covered in sweat from hauling water with jerry cans to water his one-month-old mustard greens and two-month-old cauliflower. The shadow of crop failure was already upon him. Drought and pests are the main factors. He points out a pest that farmers call the jumping bug. These are small beetles that eat the leaves of the plants. “If you spray it with pesticides, it will move. It can jump,” he says.
He flips a mustard leaf over and reveals a white spot on it: the jumping bug’s egg. After being photographed and enlarged, it turned out to be beetle pupae. “They will eat this one leaf, then move on,” he said. “For mustard greens like this, it’s the leaves that are sold. If they are damaged and have holes, the price will be low and they won’t sell well.”
Traveling slowly on a motorbike through the twisting and downhill asphalt road around the village of Batu Lapisi Dalam, a languishing ridge can be seen in the distance. The grass that covered it was brown as if it had been roasted. Trees with branches and twigs look leafless.
The hills reveal rocks. The ground looks reddish and brownish. If the hills were human beings, they would stand with skinny bodies showing ribs.
Malino is located at the foothill of Lompobattang mountain range at an altitude of a thousand meters above sea level. The drive from Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, will take around two hours. This place is popular among the locals for its cooler air.
Malino is a touristy place. Villas and hotels stand proudly along the farmland. They range from minimalist to European-style with striking colors.
There are tea plantations that have been established by the Dutch government too in this area. One guesthouse, built in 1927, was later used as a negotiation place to form the East Indonesia State.
Malino has long been a center of agricultural production. The Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) recorded the highest production of annual crops in 2020 reaching 40,702 tons. Other vegetable crops are leeks with production reaching 20,730 tons. Then carrots 18,741 tons, then tomatoes 14,612 tons, and cabbage 9,929 tons.
Vegetables from this region supply the needs of Makassar and several regions in Eastern Indonesia. However, over time, agricultural land has shrunk due to the construction of hotels for tourism facilities. Land prices have even risen sharply, reaching millions of rupiah per meter.
“Many farmers have sold their land for villas. Then they would work in the villa as laborers. That makes me sad,” said Arifuddin.
Arifuddin
Arifuddin guesses his age is approaching 40. He can’t read and write, but he is a tenacious farmer. His family does not own their land. “I see now that vegetable farmers are starting to buy vegetables too. I think something is wrong,” he says. “If farmers no longer have land, it’s like the end of the world,” he continues.
Five years ago, in the memory of dozens of residents, when the drought came, it always rained every week, even if only briefly. However, five years later the drought was as hot as burning coals. There was no rain at all. The peak was in 2023.
From June to September, it seemed that the sky never gave rise to cumulus clouds-the rain messenger. The sky was always blue, from dawn to dusk. The local knowledge used by the ancestors in dealing with the planting season has finally become obsolete.
For Malino farmers, July should still be raining and the dry season should come in September. However, in 2023 the rains hit the area in February. Vegetables planted in December failed to harvest in February due to water oversupply and rot. Potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower failed to harvest. In addition to the rain intensity, the wind also became stronger. Plants that were still about two months old were broken, including tomatoes and chilies. The farmers stroke their chests as the prices fall. “If you bring 20,000 rupiahs, you can get one sack of potatoes,” said a farmer. “One red plastic bag [20 kg] of tomatoes is only 5,000 rupiahs,” another farmer said. “You don’t need to buy mustard. Just ask for it.”
Ma’rang
Under the unforgiving heat, Ma’rang (62 years old) with his wife and son were clearing the grass between the plant beds. He had planted leeks, which were three months old. It was supposed to be harvested in about two weeks, but the plants were growing poorly and turning yellow.
Leeks grow in clumps. One clump consists of about 10 to 15 leaves. The Ma’rang family plucked the yellowed leaves, hoping that they would not disturb the other leaves. “If you remove the yellow ones, the next day the others will also turn yellow,” he said.
The yellow leaves, according to Ma’rang, are caused by mold. He quotes people who came to sell him pesticides. He has also followed the advice of those sellers, but the results are always nil. This year he has failed to harvest twice. The first was simply a break even, the other one was a total loss.
For them, this event is like the sound of the apocalypse door opening. They shuddered but did not give up.
His daughter, who had come to the garden, watched the crops with an empty gaze. She was in her final semester at a university in Makassar. She said to Ma’rang, “What if this crop fails again? What about my semester fee?”
“Be patient. We’ll find a way,” Ma’rang replied.
Ma’rang can still be considered quite lucky. His land, located in the Tonasa village, is in the same row as Puang Jari’. On his land, there is a tributary that flows water even though the discharge is small. In contrast, on the side of the road opposite his farm, hundreds of hectares of land can no longer be cultivated. The river had dried up a few months ago.
The choice for farmers is to plant sweet potatoes and cassava. Unfortunately, these crops still need water during the growth process. Now although the plants are alive, the tubers are small and unmarketable, or even the plants die.
The farmers recounted the story with broken hearts. For them, it was like the end of the world. But they would not give up. Now they are slowly planting again, hoping for a change in the weather.
Text Editor: Kurniawan Adi Saputro
Translation: Astrid Reza
