FOOD SECURITY IN INDONESIA – COLOUR IT PURPLE
By Ibu Kat
 Pak Adi Kharisma is a worried man. Statistics tell him that his country is
facing a serious food security crisis. The thoughtful Rotarian leafs through a
bundle of newspaper clippings to point out some disturbing facts. Food security
means having enough food. By the year 2030, Indonesia’s population will have
grown from 230 million to 425 million. Per capita consumption of rice is about
139 kilograms per person per year. Multiply 139 kg by 425,000,000 people to
arrive at the amount of rice Indonesia will have to produce every year to feed
its people -- just 23 years from now. My calculator doesn’t have nearly enough
zeros to do the job.
An insightful newspaper article written by a journalist named Hermas puts the
problem into perspective. Solution One: Double the area of land under rice
cultivation from 11 million hectares to 22 million. We all know the combination
of population pressure, ever-increasing industry and the occasional villa
development ensure that every year will see less land under cultivation, not
more. (Please don’t get me started on the insanity of taking agricultural land
out of production to build houses for foreigners.) Solution Two: Double rice
production from 30 million tons a year to 60. Sadly, even if the System of Rice
Intensification (SRI) is widely adopted, Pak Adi feels that less than 25% of
farmers are industrious enough to undertake the more intensive cultivation
needed for this method. Solution Three: Zero population growth. This is just not
going to happen. Solution Four: Reduce the 100% dependency of rice as a staple
food by replacing 50% of it with locally grown alternatives.
Sweet Sweet Potato
Bingo! Pak Adi, thinking out of the box as is his habit, began to research
how this could be done with sweet potato (ubi), his favourite traditional food.
He was further inspired by a visit to Turin in 2006 as a guest of the World
Meeting of Food Community / Terra Madre as a representative of Indonesia and the
humble ubi. With the enthusiastic support of international food experts and
proponents of the Slow Food movement, he launched his little purple restaurant
and growing line of food products in Denpasar last year.
After some experimentation, he found that cooking and mashing purple and yellow
ubi and adding this paste to the rice during cooking made a palatable staple.
Gently tinted mauve and yellow, it has a pleasant taste and texture not too
different from white rice. “By using 30% ubi and 70% rice, the nutrient value is
increased,” Adi explains. “Ubi is a gluten-free antioxidant with high fibre,
beta-carotene, prebiotics and a low glycemic index. If we then replace another
20% of the rice with locally produced legumes like pigeon peas, soy beans, long
beans and peanuts, we will have a really nutritious staple.”
Pak Adi is in fact re-inventing the wheel here. Back in the 1960s,
then-President Sukarno introduced the concept of mixing rice with sweet potato,
taro and corn to make it go further. My staff remembers that when they were
young their staple was still a combination of 70% ubi and 30% rice except during
Galungan, the only time in the year when they tasted unadulterated rice.
Sweet Products
Pak Adi’s products are slowly gaining popularity as a novelty, especially
after 10 local TV stations featured them early in 2007. His restaurant serves
his trademark mauve and yellow nasi campur, tasty ubi juice, ubi ice cream and
vacuum-packed fresh paste that can be mixed with other food at home -- all
bright purple of course. He also produces moist and really delicious brownies
made from local cocoa beans, coconut oil, ubi flour, sugar and peanuts. None of
his products contain preservatives or artificial colour. In fact it’s hard to
imagine an artificial colour that could compete with the vibrant natural purple
hue of his favourite ingredient.
It would be helpful to have government support on this important initiative, but
as in every other country bureaucrats can hardly think 23 months ahead, never
mind 23 years. So Pak Adi is undertaking his project single-handed.
His goal of working toward a sustainable local staple food has taken him in some
interesting directions. He has a program that trains local senior high school
students to be productive and successful farmers. He’s about to launch a project
that trains village women to make food products for sale locally using the tiny
ubi tubers that are left over after harvest. “This will empower women by helping
them generate income, and the children will grow accustomed to the taste of ubi
early in life; they’ll also be healthier!” Pak Adi is aware of the critical
importance of educating women in nutrition, hygiene and basic economics. He also
plans to start throwing birthday parties for young children, serving his tasty
purple treats instead of McJunkFood. Although he wants to sell his products,
he’s mainly interested in socializing the addition of ubi to the local diet in
any way he can. Pak Adi is also working with the East Bali Poverty Project to
introduce the growing of ubi in these remote and impoverished villages.
20 Varieties of Ubi
Of the 20 varieties of ubi he’s found, he selected four -- white, yellow,
purple and orange -- for his products. He starts the young plants himself and
gives them to farmers in the mountains to grow for him along with pigeon peas,
soy beans, pumpkins and peanuts. If intensively farmed, 20 to 40 tons of ubi can
be grown on one hectare.
Sweet potatoes grow all over the world, from Papua to Okinawa and Hawaii, and
were already being cultivated in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.
Most of the world’s sweet potatoes – about 80% -- are grown in China. Around 600
varieties are known, some growing up to 2 metres in length. Purple ice cream has
long been popular in Hawaii and Japan, and I’ve sampled bright purple desserts
in Manila.
It’s not often that someone comes up with an achievable solution to a big
problem. Pak Adi’s mission is worth supporting, especially by helping bring it
to the attention of officials who can help popularize his tasty, nutritious and
very colourful products and the concept behind them.
Next time you’re in Denpasar, drop by the little purple Warung Sela Boga at 238
Jalan Teuku Umar, call Pak Adi at 0811 397 590 or email him at adi_kh@hotmail.com
for more information.
Other rice-related articles by Ibu Kat:
Ibu Kat has been writing articles for the Bali Advertiser since 2001.
Ubud Farmers Market Bridges The Gap
Romancing The Rice
A Green Tipping Point
Filling Indonesia's Rice Bowls
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