My hope is that the youth of Indonesia understand the ecological significance of their lands and realise that no amount of instant payoff is worth what they are losing.

As is the case with most developing nations, bribes, pay offs, unregulated policy and law and greed are at their worse. Often times it is the foreign investors that purchase the lands and level them for palm oil, rice, mining and industry. More often than not it is the poor Indonesian farmer who loses out, not realising that the lands he has sold for a fine price, was his greatest and most irreplaceable asset.

Still, there is beauty everywhere. Rural Indonesia, once you overlook the rubbish, is very picturesque. Rice paddies, mosques (or temples) and bamboo huts are doted over a landscape backed by smoking volcanoes. The people are kind and generous, although quick to make a dollar, they have a sense of humour about it all. You really need to get off the tourist routes if you want to meet the locals and not one person I met could possibly understand why I had travelled to Indonesia to see farming!

We can learn so much from the Indonesian small holder. It is not uncommon for a family to have a plot of only a couple of acres but they will produce enough produce to feed themselves and sell the excess at the colourful local markets. Poultry is an important source of meat and eggs are essential to the farm. The general breed is a small jungle fowl creature, an ancestor of our hybridised birds but they are colourful and tough.

It was quite common for the small farm to have a couple of cows and in Bali, a pig or two. These cows were tethered to a shelter near the home and fed daily from locally harvested foliage. Leucearna is used extensively for animal feed and trees are kept in near topiary condition with the constant collection of green matter. Motorbikes, the standard family vehicle, were used to travel to local river beds and road sides to gather huge bundles of wild grass and foliage which was then fed to the animals. Never once did I see an animal being fed a purchased feed.

Permaculture is a way of life for these people. Permaculture wasn’t invented, it was merely discovered by the west who probably lost it centuries ago! Indonesian farms are all based on permaculture principles. A five acre plot will see small crops of fruits and vegetables, interspersed with useful plants and animals. Near the house is kept the cattle, a small garden growing useful things for the kitchen, often rabbits in cages, poultry and systems immediately needed for the processing of their produce.

One farm we visited in Bali, supplemented their income by collecting vast amounts of fallen frangipanis from the surrounding beaches and drying them for processing of essential oil.

There is no refrigeration so produce is collected daily and taken to local markets. It is always fresh.

The homes are simple, often made from woven bamboo, timber or rendered cement brick. It really is quite eye opening seeing how wonderfully simply these people live. Everything they have is useful and they take care of it. Nothing is wasted.

Everywhere I travelled, from Java to Kalimantan, their where small differences but the practices were similar. We visited low land tropical rainforest, dry islands and mountains that were cool and frosty. Such a wide range of climatic conditions means the production of a wide range of produce. Most of Indonesia is intensively farmed with every nook, cranny, steep slope and patch of dirt, producing something you can sell or eat. It needs to be with so many to feed.