Food self-sufficiency: Managing the newly-opened tidal paddy fields for rice farming in Indonesia (A case study in West Kalimantan, Indonesia)

The Indonesian government continues to develop a sustainable food self-sufficiency program by increasing national food security through an extension program. One of the instruments is by opening new rice fields. The area of new rice fields in Indonesia is 222,442 ha spreading on the islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. This new rice field is estimated to produce 1.2 million tons of rice per year. In the case of West Kalimantan Province, it has opened new rice fields cover an area of 23,384 ha, mostly in tidal lands. Expansion of newly-opened rice fields does not increase land productivity. Moreover, rice productivity in the newly-opened paddy fields is only an average of 2 t ha^-1. The low rice productivity is caused by biophysical factors of land in agriculture, and social-economic, and institutional factors of farmers at the village level. Therefore, it is necessary to have a rice farming model in newly-opened rice fields involving farmer groups, researchers, agricultural extension agents, government agencies, the private sector, and banks. The purpose of this study was to present a sustainable rice farming model in the newly-opened tidal rice fields. The results of this study showed that application of the rice farming model in newly-opened tidal rice fields could increase rice productivity from 2 to 5.7 t ha^-1 and farmer income of IDR 10.6 million, involving good collaboration among farmer groups and farmer economic organizations supported by banks for sustainability.

Untangling the role of social relationships for overcoming challenges in local food systems: a case study of farmers in Québec, Canada

Advocates for re-localizing food systems often encourage consumers to support local farmers and strengthen local food economies. Yet, local food systems hinge not only on consumers' willingness to buy local food but also on whether farmers have the social support networks to address diverse challenges during food production and distribution. This study characterizes the challenges and support systems of farmers selling to local markets in Québec, Canada, across multiple growing seasons using a mixed-methods research design. We sent an online questionnaire to 1046 farmers and conducted follow-up interviews with 15 of the 133 respondents. Our findings show that farmers relied on an average of four support actor groups, particularly employees, customers, and other farmers. Actors played distinct roles in terms of the importance, frequency, and formality of interactions, providing immediate and long-term support through formal and informal relationships across multiple spatial scales (farm, local community, and regional/international). Our thematic analysis showed that support actors helped farmers in four key domains: (1) Knowledge sharing and emotional support; (2) Labour and workforce; (3) Material and financial aid; and (4) Consumer education and business promotion. Farmer associations provided resources to tackle various challenges, acting as bridges across multiple support actor groups. Yet, our results suggest that political desires to encourage local food systems are in some cases poorly matched with resources to address specific types of challenges farmers face. Specifically, overlooking the role of diverse social support actors in helping farmers build food production and distribution capacity could undermine efforts to foster localization.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10460-022-10343-0.