Smoke billowed on the kitchen roof of Hermina Ugha’s house. A repeating sound can be heard from a distance of about ten meters. Inside the three-by-four-meter kitchen, the 46-year-old woman was seen grating coconuts. Occasionally, the activity stops when she needs to move firewood to the nearby stove. “There are black beans in this pot. The beans are boiled to make them soft,” she said as she opened the lid of the pot on the stove.
On one side of the kitchen is a wooden table. On top of it, there are several small containers containing about a handful of rice, sliced taro sweet potatoes, and papaya leaves. “When the beans [that are boiled] are soft, they are mixed with the rice, taro yam, papaya leaves, and coconut milk. After that, it is boiled again until everything is cooked, then served,” she explained. Hermina is a resident of Lokawolo, a hamlet in Woloede village of Mauponggo District, Nagekeo Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The local people named the compote-like local food: ae yame.
Woloede Village, located at the foot of Ebulobo, a volcano in Nagekeo, is known for its fertility. Agricultural commodities such as cloves and nutmeg look green and lush. However, at the same time, the hilly topography makes it difficult for farmers to plant rice.
“Before we always boiled bananas to save rice,” […] Now, she said, “bananas have been attacked by a rare disease.”
After waiting for about 45 minutes, the ae yame is ready to be served. Hermina scooped it up and transferred it to a container commonly used to store vegetables. After all the family members had gathered, they ate lunch together. “After eating this, we don’t eat rice anymore because we’re already full,” she said.
Hermina and other women in her village have been making ae yame for the last two months. “Before, we always boiled bananas to save rice,” she said, referring to kepok bananas, the most widely cultivated type of banana in her village. Now, she said, “Bananas have been attacked by a rare disease.”
Rising Rice Prices, while Bananas decline
Hermina paused when she was asked about the the bananas, which she calls ‘stricken by a rare disease’. She took a deep breath. “Now bananas are just a memory,” she said softly. “I don’t know what we will eat in the future if the price of rice continues to rise. We can’t keep making ae yame because the process is complicated and long.”
Currently (in October 2023), Hermina said, one kilogram of rice costs 15,000 rupiahs, up from 13,000 rupiahs previously. This adds to the suffering of the villagers, the majority of whom are farmers. “Cloves have not produced fruit for four years, and bananas are affected by disease. Our life will be more difficult in the future,” said Hermina. The disease began to attack the bananas in her garden at the end of July 2023. “At first it was only one tree. After a while, all the banana trees were affected by the disease,” she said.
“The disease seems to enter through the heart of the banana. We saw that initially there was liquid dripping from the heart of the banana. Some are white and some are red,” she said. “If the banana heart already has signs [of oozing], then the banana fruit must be damaged. The contents cannot be eaten because they are full of liquid,” she adds. This is the first time she has seen this disease in her life.
Hermina continued, that before the disease, bananas used to be a favorable commodity among farmers in her village and other villages in Mauponggo Sub district because of their high economic value. “We used to sell one bunch of bananas for 30,000 to 40,000 rupiahs,” she said. In a month, Hermina said, her family harvests up to 20 bunches of bananas planted between the clove trees in her three plantations. “Now we in this house lose around 600,000 to one million rupiahs in income every month,” she said.
Hermina says that apart from rice replacement and income, kepok bananas are also an important crop in the traditions of the Mauponggo community in general. “The [kepok] banana is the main ingredient in making muku ghe’u during traditional ceremonies such as the laying of house foundations,” she said.
Muku gheu is a specialty of young kepok bananas sliced and boiled with pork or chicken intestines and fat. Muku ghe’u, Hermina explains, is the main side dish when eating together in the ceremony. The rest is then distributed to relatives who come as souvenirs from the ceremony organizers.
“If [kepok] bananas are completely extinct due to this disease, we are worried that the tradition of making muku ghe’u during traditional ceremonies will be lost in the future,” she said.
Natalis Mere Medo, another resident of Woloede, corroborates Hermina’s story. The 39-year-old man, who owns a seven-hectare kepok banana plantation, admitted that he lost around 12 million rupiahs every month after the disease attacked the kepok bananas on his plantation for 17 years. Initially, he planted them as a canopy for his nutmeg plants.
“I used to plant these bananas together with nutmeg. I heard people say that if you plant nutmeg, you have to plant bananas side by side so that the soil doesn’t dry out,” he said while visiting his banana plantation. “When the bananas started to bear fruit, someone wanted to buy them. So, as soon as I harvested the first crop, I sold it,” he added. Natalis said that every month he harvests up to 400 bunches of bananas in his plantation. He has not done this for the past two months. “We’ve just given up,” he said. “We told the village government, but there was no follow-up.”
Head of the Nagekeo Regency Agriculture Office Olivia Monika Mogi said the disease that attacks kepok bananas in the Mauponggo District area is banana blood disease. The disease, she said, was discovered on March 29th, 2023. The most affected location is in the Mauponggo High School Complex, about 10 kilometers south of Woloede Village. “During the field identification results, the officer suggested to immediately eradicate the severely affected banana plants and did not recommend farmers to feed livestock the affected banana stems,” she said.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s official website, banana blood disease is caused by a plant pathogen called Ralstonia solanacearum race 2, P. celebensis or banana blood disease (BDB). The disease has external symptoms, namely yellowing of fully opened leaves. In mature plants, the base of the leaf will break so that the leaves will hang around the stem. Saplings will show symptoms of wilting, although the infection is not always systemic. Often the ill-fated plants still can produce healthy seedlings. Fruiting banana plants, if the banana heart is still present, will appear dry, shrivelled, and blackened.
The internal symptom of banana blood disease is that the vasculature will show brownish-red necrosis when the stem is cut. In addition, a white to reddish-brown or blackish bacterial slime will be released from the cut. When viewed from the outside, bananas affected by blood diseases often appear healthy. However, when cut, the diseased banana fruit will rot and contain bacterial slime that is reddish yellow or blackish red. The color of the pulp changes and young kepok bananas rot.
Olivia said, apart from Mauponggo District, the banana blood disease in Nagekeo has now spread to Boawae District, Nangaroro District, and Central Keo District.
According to her, el-Nino triggers the rapid spread of bacteria in banana blood disease. “El-Nino is hot, dry, and windy. This wind allows the accelerated movement of the bacteria [ralsonia solanacearum race 2] from one place to another,” he says.
“I only heard ‘word of mouth’ that the way to eliminate the disease was to eradicate and burn the banana trees.”
Professor Loekas Soesanto, a plant pest and disease expert from Jendral Soedirman University, Purwokerto, said climate change can indeed cause changes in the behavior of living things, including insects. “If insects are vectors of blood diseases in bananas, then insect displacement also occurs due to climate impacts, especially hot conditions,” he said, “Insects prefer hot conditions rather than cold or rainy,” he continued.
The same case, according to him, also occurs in several plants in Java, such as yellow disease in chilies, which is also transmitted by vector insects. A few years ago, the disease was not found in chili plants grown in the highlands. “But with climate change, in recent years the disease has been found in chili plants in the highlands,” he said.
The only cure for blood disease on bananas, he said, is with secondary metabolites of antagonistic microbes – one of the mechanisms of plant disease inhibition by antagonistic microbes.
The efforts made by the Nagekeo Regency Agriculture Office, again according to Olivia Monika Mogi, is to make a written circular in each sub-district through agricultural training center (BPP) and forward it to Radio Suara Nagekeo. In addition, they conduct joint identification between field agricultural extension workers (PPL), plant pest organism control officers (POPT), and farmers. The Agriculture Office also, she said, provided understanding to farmers regarding banana blood disease.
Olivia’s claim was denied by Hermina and Natalis. According to them, until now there has been no government attention to banana diseases in their village. “We have never received any counseling regarding this banana disease,” said Hermina. Meanwhile, Natalis said, “I only heard ‘word of mouth’ that the way to get rid of the disease is to eradicate and burn the banana trees.”
“I did not eradicate the banana trees because nutmeg needs soil moisture. Especially this year, the dry season is long,” he said. He continued, “Based on ‘word of mouth’ that another way to prevent the fruit from blood diseases is by cutting the heart of the banana. I have done this second method [cutting the heart of the banana], but there is no change. The banana fruit is still damaged.”
Miserable Farmers
Wilhelmina Wona, 61 years old, another farmer in Woloede Village, also complained about the phenomenon of banana blood disease attacking plants in her area. She said the disease, which attacks kepok bananas, has made life difficult for her family. “This banana is one of our hopes for survival in the future besides nutmeg,” she said. “[But] now bananas can no longer be eaten and sold, cloves are no longer fruitful. Rice is expensive. We wonder what we will eat in the future,” she continues.
She says that in the past, when blood diseases had not yet struck, just like Hermina’s family, they often used bananas as an alternative food to save on rice consumption. Wilhemina, who has three family members at home, said, “Before the banana disease, we only spent 10 kilograms of rice a month.” “Now we spend 20 kilograms of rice a month because we have nothing else to eat in the morning and evening,” she said.
While thinking about her failed bananas and cloves, Wilhelmina is also worried about the nutmeg, which is now her family’s only source of income
Bananas, she said, have become a mainstay commodity for farmers in her village after cloves have not borne fruit since 2020. The proceeds from banana sales, she said, are often used to buy rice and finance other family needs.
The author met Wilhemina in her garden on Monday afternoon, October 2nd, 2023, when she had just finished filling water in the bamboo that serves as a water dropper for several clove trees. Wilhelmina said that she used this method to anticipate the threat of death to the plants due to the long drought that had lasted since July. “I use this method because I see that the leaves on some of these clove trees have started to wither,” she said. “Who knows, next year they will bear fruit,” she added.
Wilhelmina suspects that the cloves are not bearing fruit due to weather anomalies. From 2020 to 2022, she said, rainfall was very high, while in 2023 the summer was longer. “We last harvested cloves in 2019,” she said. “The cloves, if it rains too much, the fruit doesn’t come out,” she said.
While thinking about her failed banana and clove harvests, Wilhelmina is also worried about the nutmeg, which is now her family’s only source of income. “Now I’m also having a headache looking at the shrivelled nutmeg fruit on some of the trees,” she said, inviting the author to see the condition of the fruit. “We also don’t know why this happened. Is it because it’s too hot?”
Banana blood disease does not only affects the farmers but also the traders who often buy bananas in Mauponggo, including Woloede Village. Anselmus Jo Gay, 48 years old, one of the buyers of kepok bananas, said that he is currently losing up to eight million rupiahs in revenue every month since the blood disease attacked bananas in Mauponggo Sub-district.
“I bring the bananas every week. I buy them from farmers at 5,000 rupiahs per comb or 25,000 rupiahs per bunch,” he said. He then sells them to several traders in Ngada, East Manggarai, and Manggarai districts, for 50,000 to 60,000 rupiahs per bunch. “Every week I bring at least 100 bundles or 500 combs,” he said. “My net profit, excluding vehicle rental and other costs, is around two million rupiahs per week,” he added.
Currently, said Anselmus, he has to look for another job to meet his family’s needs and pay for his children’s education. “I’m still thinking about what work I want to do in the future besides working on a plantation,” he said.
Amid minimal government intervention to deal with the impact of climate change on food and agricultural commodities in Woloede, some village residents have been forced to migrate. “Since cloves don’t bear fruit, many people from here have migrated, working in oil palm plantations in Kalimantan,” said Natalis, without specifying the number of residents who had migrated. “Next year there will be more people migrating because of this banana disease,” he added.
Hermina confirmed Natalis’ story regarding the residents who had migrated. She said that one of the many Woloede residents who had migrated was her eldest son. “He left last month. We at home agreed that he would leave so he could help us with living expenses,” she said.
Text Editor: Kurniawan Adi Saputro
