Prlf
Agriculture is one of the most essential things that every country has been struggling to modernize by advanced technologies whether using the newest tools or even utilize AI to help farmers, people eventually forget that they must live in harmony with nature to keep them exist until next generation.
But there is a tropical country which is Indonesia has an island that still utilizes traditional tool and way to farm to for over decades, that is Lombok Island which is located in middle of Indonesia, has good weather and land that is suitable to plant the vegetable or Asian main meal which is rice, when speaking about farming, we are going to be reminded by how exaggerated human exploits the land to produce human’s need, using chemical too much, utilizing land too much, sadly when we want to live longer and healthier, we damage our own land, and the worst part we do is we consume fruits, vegetables and main meal affected by chemical or poison.
Using chemical must be a problem for many countries, and there have been a few countries trying to reduce using chemical to plant, yet it is still a big problem that we have to face, for the example there is a small island in the middle of Indonesia that is Lombok, Lombok people has been practicing since 16th century the better way to farm and also able to reduce using chemical in agriculture by harnessing rice straw as natural fertilizer for tobacco, tomato or any summer plants.
Indonesia has two seasons, namely six months of rainy season and six months of summer, these can be very useful for Indonesian people to plant many varieties of plants, in Lombok in the end of rain season people will plant the tobacco particularly, and they are going to harness the straw to cover the land so that the tobacco does not get cold and get benefit as natural fertilizer.
But the question is why Lombok people use the straw? It is just because they do not have modern fertilizer, or they already think the future?
In fact, Lombok people just follow their ancestor for many years even maybe before 16th century, but how they know the straw has good impact?
Lombok People use the straw just to cover the tobacco from the cold weather since they plant the tobacco in the end of rain season, so the rain must still fall every time, fortunately the society feel that the straw has good effect for their plants, then some university in Indonesia did research and discovered that the straw contain nutrition which is able to increase soil fertility, improve soil structure, increase air capacity in the soil, and increase soil microbial activity
Not only does harnessing straw make Lombok people the future of agriculture, but they do intercrop which is people plant two different plants in the same place, but the plants have different age so that when one already died, the second plant will replace and get fertilizer from previous one.
To illustrate, they combine tobacco and chili, then they can harvest continuously after they finish farming the tobacco the chili will catch up, the farmers do not need long time to wait for the moment of harvesting because the gap between tobacco and chili are just a month even less than that.
After the period of chili is gone, the farmer will plant the rice when that moment is rain season and always do the same thing for over years.
