With patience and innovation, farmers in Sukajadi village of Wado district, Sumedang regency, cultivate hanjeli (Job’s tears). They face several challenges in contributing to food security for the country.
By
Tatang Mulyana Sinaga
·4 minutes read
Kompas/Tatang Mulyana Sinaga
Sutarya, 71, tends to his crop of hanjeli (Job’s tears) on Sunday (25/2) on his farm in Sukajadi village, Wado district, Sumedang regency, West Java. The local villagers are cultivating hanjeli to reintroduce the food crop, which was once a staple food in West Java.
With patience and innovation, farmers in Sukajadi village of Wado district, Sumedang regency, West Java, cultivate hanjeli (Job’s tears). They face several challenges in contributing to food security for the country.
Sutarya, 71, had a bright expression on his face as he looked over the garden behind his house. The garden was planted with corn and hanjeli, or Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), the plant that transports Sutarya back to a time20 years.
“My parents cultivated hanjeli in the past as a staple food. But today, hanjeli has been forgotten and people depend on rice,” said Sutarya, who has cultivated hanjeli for the past year.
Sutarya said that during his childhood, the people of Sukajadi ate a variety of staple foods, such as rice, Job’s tears, corn and sweet potato. The practice meant that people were not dependent on one single food crop. So, if a particular food was hard to obtain, they could consume other foods. However, as time went by, hanjeli was abandoned because cultivating it was deemed impractical. The crop took six months to reach harvest, longer than rice or corn. Moreover, it was in little demand so that it had no good selling point. As a result, the villagers shifted to consuming only rice. Hanjeli was limited to making cakes or crackers only on special occasions.
The increasing prices of food have prompted several people to start planting hanjeli again. Now, 150 households cultivate hanjeli on 3 hectares of land. Their business, however, is not running smoothly.
The 2017 harvest was poor. Sutarya’s 2,800-square-meter plot, for example, only produced 175 kilograms of unhusked rice, making him a mere Rp 700,000. If he had grown corn, he could have earned Rp 2 million.
Sutarya did not give up. He was aware that it would take time to adapt to change. This year, he and several villagers planted hanjeli, employing a new farming method with optimum sowing patterns.
Including Sutarya, 30 villagers are grouped in the Pantastik Farmers Cooperative (KWT). Through the cooperative, the villagers are trying to boost their hanjeli production and introduce the food crop to the public. “The people grow and consume it as well. Even though they still eat rice, hanjeli is slowly becoming an alternative,” said Pantastik KWT chairperson Anisa Choeriah.
Anisa said it was not hard to grow hanjeli. The plant required organic fertilizer only at the beginning of the planting season. The plant was different from rice and other food crops that regularly needed a variety of fertilizers and pesticides.
Rich in nutrition, protein
Hanjeli has a high nutritional and protein content. According to a study by Padjadjaran University agriculture professor Tati Nurmalain 2013, hanjeli’s nutritional content is similar to rice.
Each 100 grams of hanjeli contains 76.4 percent of carbohydrates, protein (14.1 percent), vegetable fat (7.9 percent) and calcium (54 milligrams). With such great potential, Tati regretted that hanjeli had not been utilized seriously.
Anisa understood the challenges. Aside from limited experience and farming literature, it was not easy to ask the people to shift from planting and eating rice to planting and eating hanjeli.
Anisa shared her experience in 2016 when she planted only hanjeli. Because the villagers relied only on harvesting hanjeli, they had no other source of income when the harvest was disappointing.
At that time, for each hectare planted with hanjeli, the villagers could produce 2.8 tons of unhusked rice, or equal to 1 ton of hanjeli. That raised the price of hanjeli to Rp 10,000-Rp 15,000 per kilogram, while rice cost around Rp 12,000 per kilogram. As a result, the demand for hanjeli was minimal.
“We did not give up,” said Anisa.
Learning from the experience, during the 2017 planting season, Pantastik KWT and the local people began applying “tumpang sari”, or intercropping, planting different crops side by side on the same field. Hanjeli was planted along with rice and corn.
They planted hanjeli along the edges of the farmland. Pantastik KWT also innovated post-harvest production, beginning with making crackers or cereal, and then branched out into other food products such as brownies, traditional cakes and hanjeli porridge.
Anisa said that the potential demand for hanjeli was more than 20 kg per month, which boosted the villagers’ hopes as well as enthusiasm to continue planting hanjeli.
As implied by its English name, Job’s tears, the farmers want to practice patience as they strive to contribute to achieving food sovereignty for their country.
