Project diary: Preservation of Indonesian pepper with new farming methods

The project "aGROWforests" in Indonesia supports pepper farms in adopting climate-resilient agricultural methods, aiming to increase the income of pepper farmers.

Pepper has been traded from Indonesia since the late Middle Ages. Initially, the spice was primarily exported to China, but nowadays the main markets are the USA and Europe. However, cultivation is becoming increasingly unattractive for Indonesian farmers because today’s profit margins are far too low. To ensure a future supply of pepper from Indonesia, the Herbs and Spices company Verstegen , the NGO Fairfood, and pepper exporter PT CAN founded the project "aGROWforests," which has been part of the "Initiative for Climate Smart Supply Chains" (I4C) since early December 2022. To understand how Indonesian farmers cultivate their pepper and how they can make a living from it, the project partners interviewed three Indonesian farmers, Arofiq, Sapauni, and Umar, about their life situations and views on pepper cultivation.

Pepper cultivation was once profitable

Many Indonesian farmers used to plant pepper because it was profitable, remembers farmer Sapauni. The yields were sufficient to support herself and her child. From her earnings, Sapauni was able to build a house and buy a car. Nowadays, however, she can no longer live solely from pepper cultivation. This is primarily due to the price drop.
 

A few years ago, the market price for a kilogram of pepper was about 180,000 rupiahs, which is equivalent to around 10 euros. Today, a kilogram gets 80,000 rupiahs, roughly 4.50 euros, representing only 44 percent of the original price. Because prices are so low, more and more farmers are turning to other markets, often opting to plant palms for palm oil on their agricultural land. Farmer Arofiq, for instance, now only cultivates part of his land with pepper.

Another major problem for Indonesian agriculture is the weather. Unreliable weather patterns make cultivation and harvesting difficult to plan. And: Climate change exacerbates the consequences of the region's dependence on monoculture. Intensive agriculture creates a paradoxical situation where greater quantities of fertiliser are required to tackle soil degradation, while reduced biodiversity allows pests to rapidly infest fields and farms. Pepper farmer Umar explains, “Current rain comes unpredictably, dry season also is not on time, so in the end farming pepper is a mess.” During such unpredictable weather changes, many pepper plants die, mainly due to the diseases that spread as a result, says Umar. This is catastrophic for people who depend on agricultural goods. 
 

aGROWforests offers Solutions

To tackle these challenges, the aGROWforests project aims to support Indonesian pepper farmers through the implementation of agroforestry. Farmer Arofiq has already had some experience with the project and is gradually transforming his farming system. "In the past, when I saw weeds, they made me feel uncomfortable. But now I take it easy. Even if the weeds are tall, my heart is still calm,” he says. Farmer Umar also reports initial successes: Since he started planting other crops among his pepper plants, diseases no longer spread across the entire agricultural area but are confined to a small space.

 

All three farmers have hopes tied to the new project. Arofiq hopes that with the help of the project, Indonesian pepper will remain of high quality in the future. Sapauni wants to continue selling her pepper. Umar, whose ancestors were also pepper farmers, wishes primarily to preserve the tradition of pepper cultivation so that future generations can live from it.

aGROWforests is funded under the "Initiative for Climate Smart Supply Chains" by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).