Paper short abstract:

The world faces a food supply & distribution crisis, posing significant risk for countries like Indonesia. A case study of a network of farmer and consumer initiatives is presented that successfully addresses issues of sustainable production and equitable distribution to the benefit of both parties.

Paper long abstract:

Deteriorating environmental growing conditions, increasing demand and increasing inequality combine to produce significant food security risk in many developing countries. Indonesia is among the 30 countries most at risk. Here the food security problem is essentially a rice problem, as upto 1,25 million tons have had to be imported annually from the Mekong Delta, which is itself under severe threat. Small farmers grow most of Indonesia's domestic rice, but they now struggle to make a living from farming, partly because state interventions depress prices. For disadvantaged consumers all over Indonesia, in turn, fluctuations of the market price of rice are a vital concern.

The mainstream approach, shared by the agricultural research complex, corporations, many international development agencies and the Indonesian state, is to enhance capital investment, new technology and better market access, and this leads to a growth of corporate land holdings and profit oriented production decisions. The alternative approach, shared by small-farmers organisations, NGOs and ethnographic researchers, tend toward solutions grounded in local knowledge, traditional farming, and local systems of distribution and consumption. The radical disjuncture between these two approaches leads their proponents to talk past each other.

Since the 1990s, there have been initiatives encouraging farmers to convert to organic production to reduce production costs and add market value. Many succeeded in reducing production costs and some increased production, but most were less successful in marketing. This paper explores initiatives working across the gap of understanding, and addressing marketing and distributions issues simultaneously.