Projects of the Lambrineu Community Home: growing ginger and chili pepper

By Hans Nijhoff

The Lambrineu Community Home in Lampaya, which was funded by the members of INA and the Rotary Club Brussel Coudenberg, is in full operation. The dental clinic and medical care units, as well as the children’s playing center are all up and running. The Community Home has also helped to restore drinking water supply in the village of Lampaya. Two important projects that the Community Home recently started, are the growing of ginger and chili pepper in the Lhoknga sub-district.

The main source of income in Lhoknga has always been related to agriculture, with rice, ginger, chili pepper and coconut being the main products. Identification by Lambrineu concluded that ginger and chili would provide farmers with the highest income, while farmers have a long tradition and experience with these crops. Farmers are traditionally organized at village level. There is a cooperative present in the area, which is however government owned, does not have the farmers’ benefits at its highest priority, and is by many considered corrupt. Farmers only dealt with it out of security needs and because there was no alternative. Extension services (teaching farmers about production, diseases, markets and prices) in Lhoknga are practically non-existent.

As a consultant for the community, Lambrineu identified the needs and wrote project proposals. After receiving funding for two proposals it implements a ginger farmer rehabilitation program for 250 ginger farmers (started November 2005), funded by the offices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Jakarta and Banda Aceh, and a chili pepper rehabilitation program for nearly 40 chili farmers (started January 2006), with funding from the Rabobank Foundation and Plantum NL, both from the Netherlands.
Project partners in the ginger project are Wageningen University and two universities from Aceh (agriculture and economic input). Their knowledge and input is also used for the chili pepper project.

Problems in Growing Ginger
So far the projects are on track: 250 and 40 farmers signed loan agreements and in the status in March is that their land is being cleared from tsunami rubble, fenced and ready to be planted, while university staff is providing support in extension programs and by testing soil and plant material for diseases.

The ginger work plan has recently been adapted, after a Wageningen expert and the laboratory of the local university found that both Indonesian ginger plant material (which the project needed to procure) as well as the old ginger-growing soil of Lhoknga farmers is highly contaminated with a bacterium. Plant material (costs for this project: US$ 200,000) from eight different suppliers throughout Indonesia was tested and all found infected. Soil in Lhoknga is infected due to many years of ginger production on the same plot of land, without any rotation. In close consultation with UNDP it was decided to first have farmers grow corn (which neutralizes the bacterium), test the soil once again after corn harvest, before procuring and planting the expensive ginger seeds. Even if healthy plant material could be procured it would be wasted in the infected soil within one season.

Emergency consultations were held with Heads of farmer groups and Heads of the 25 villages. After heated discussions Lambrineu staff succeeded in persuading the farmers to think long rather than short term, and to grow corn before ginger.

Ginger farmers will now plant corn in April and harvest in July as well. Planting the ginger seed will take place in August and the first ginger harvest is expected in April 2007. Lambrineu is investigating imports of healthy plant material from Thailand. In April the 39 chili farmers will plant their seedlings as well, with their first harvest expected in July.

In May 2006 two experts from Wageningen University will be in Aceh for a two-week training-of-trainers program for selected staff from the two local universities. The topics are technical (integrated pest management, fertilization, post harvest, crop budgets) but will also introduce the need for long-term development, focusing on organizational and institutional aspects.

Establishing a Farmers’ Association
A new project proposal aims at implementing this long-term development plan, and focuses on establishing four main project elements: a Farmers Association, a Community Credit Facility, a Resource Centre with a Farm Field School, and a Marketing and Sales and Procurement unit.

Both budgets Lambrineu received for the ginger and chili projects earlier from UNDP, Rabobank Foundation and Plantum NL were for the rehabilitation of farmers. The new project proposal focuses on on-going project activities and seeks additional funding to support the project results mentioned above. A momentum in Lhoknga has now been created which shows a need and possibility for swift follow-up. Due to the basis created with the two on-going projects this new project proposal has a high feasibility for success.

UNDP, Rabobank Foundation and Plantum NL have agreed that pay-back of the loans by farmers should be used to create a revolving credit fund. As such it is expected that in 2006 and 2007 the Community Credit Facility will have a working budget (incoming cash-flow through pay-back by 250 and 39 farmers) of approximately US$ 200,000. This provides a basis for true economic development of the Lhoknga sub-district, provided that additional project partners support the costs of establishing the four support structures mentioned before.

Most important, after the two years of support via this project proposal the expectation is that the Farmers Association can be financially independent. The Association’s income is expected to come from procurement and sales of large volumes, and from interest on loans provided by the Community Credit Facility. It is therefore expected that the operations once the two-year project ends are fully self-supporting. However, prerequisite is that these operations receive full attention over a two-year period. Detailed cash-flow projections concerning the self-supportiveness are envisaged at the end of the first year of the new project as part of monitoring and evaluation missions.

This project provides a unique opportunity for Dutch funding agencies to share knowledge and assist farmers in organizing themselves into a sustainable and profit-making Farmer Association which will serve as example for Aceh and for Indonesia as a whole.