TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Abdul Hamid spends much of his time inside the forest near the Sungai Beras village in East Tanjung Jabung regency at Jambi province. He often checks on the approximately 1,200 vines of black pepper plant (Piper nigrum) that his farmers' group Senang Jaya planted early this year.
"We tried to plant it on a two-hectare peatland area in the forest," said the 42-year-old. Amid, as he is often called, is also the head of the group. The plants have yet to bear the peppercorns, said Amid, because it takes around two years for pepper plants to mature. The farmers expect to see results at the end of 2017.
He explained that although planting pepper was a recent initiative, villagers had planted jelutung (Dyera costulata) trees since 2014 as part of their reforestation program. "Before, we could see that the weather was hotter. Now it is slightly cooler because of the trees," said Amid.
Facilitated by the Indonesian Conservation Community (KKI Warsi), a non-governmental organization involved in conserving natural resources and community development, the villagers participated in the re-wetting and reforestation of peatlands in Tanjung Jabung as an effort to prevent forest fires. Villagers built wooden partitions on the canals so that the water would not flow out of the peatlands, Amid explained.
He added that KKI Warsi held a variety of training sessions for the farmers, to teach them on the different ways of cultivating in forest areas. "For example, we learned how to produce organic compost to fertilize our plants," he said.
In his village, there are six farmers groups with 25 members in each group. They have started to plant different fruit trees around Tanjung Jabung, which will enable them to harvest non-timber products in the future. According to Amid, villagers recently tried planting pineapple on peatland areas.
The farmers have built apiaries in order to produce honey. "We are only at the stage of production development, after we received some training a couple of months ago. We plan to turn [honey] into a commodity that we can sell," he explained.
There are also hopes that the village women will also be given a chance to get the same kind of training. Several forestry products, like rattan, can be used as raw materials to make handicrafts, which would generate more income for the women, who are mostly housewives.
"I want to continue protecting our forest so that everyone can benefit from it, including women it's not just the men who are farmers," said Amid. (*)
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