0 Organic food campaign to preserve ‘subak’

Dozens of people from the Healthy Food Consumer Group (K2PS) on Sunday campaigned for the consumption of local organic foods in an effort to preserve the subak traditional farming system. Among the crowds gathered at the Puputan Renon field, food vendors Wiwin and Dewi were the center of attention. Wiwin sells nasi tiwul (a mix of sweet potato, corn and rice), with additional salted fish and chicken soup. During the event, her food sold like hotcakes at Rp 5,000 (52 US cents) per portion. 

“I’m trying to introduce tiwul and corn as an alternative to rice,” said Wiwin, who had only been a vendor on the field for two weeks. She makes the most of weekends, when there are usually large crowds coming to the field for recreation and to play sport. During week days, she sells the food from her house on Jl. Gunung Rinjani in Denpasar. Dewi served porridge made of organic rice planted by a farmers group in her village in Mambal, Badung. She also prepared other traditional snacks from sweet potato, sticky rice and corn. 

The porridge, mixed with vegetables, was served for free for people on the field during the event. Campaign participants, including students from agricultural faculties and NGOs also distributed brochures, performed pantomimes and held a long march carrying posters containing messages encouraging the consumption of local foods. “We want to familiarize consumers with local quality foods. Bali has the potential to produce local, healthy foods, as long as consumers have knowledge of it and know how easy it is to get it,” said Luh Kartini, director of Bali Organic Association (BOA), which supports K2PS. 

K2PS is a non-formal group established on Nov. 14, 2010, in Buahan Payangan village in Gianyar, as a forum for consumers in Bali to become educated, smart, critical, and be able to disseminate information to the public about healthy food products. Kartini said Bali needed special shops to sell local foods in each village to showcase the village’s potential. She regretted that the local government could not control and did not have a database on the imported foods and non-organic foods containing pesticides flooding markets in Bali. “Imported food should be given labels, so that people know what they consume and what the food contains.” 

She said the labeling process was easy if the government was serious about supervising imported foods distributed in Bali and supporting the improvement of local food production. Catur Yudha Hariani from the Center for Environment Education said greater support for local foods would save agriculture fields and activities. “The current situation sees increasing land conversion, fewer people wanting to be farmers and skyrocketing food prices because all the food is imported.” She also regretted that the image of Bali’s tourism could be tainted due to the disappearance of subak, now acknowledged as piece of world heritage.

source : bali daily