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| News Detail |
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| FAO honours model farmer from Indonesia |
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 Indonesia, 16 Oct 2009 -- Bangkok − Today, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presented FAO awards to five Asian farmers from Fiji, India, Indonesia, Mongolia and Thailand.
Jazimah
A model farmer in rice intercropping from the Republic of Indonesia
The province of Yogyakarta is known as the great center of arts and learning in Indonesia – a place of universities where the latest developments are studied, but tradition is still prized and guarded. Born in 1964 in the district of Bantu, Jazimah is a woman who embodies the best of Yogyakarta.
Jazimah is neither a professor nor an artist. She is a farmer. She never attended one of Yogyakarta’s great colleges, although she did complete 12 years of schooling. Nonetheless, she is a woman driven by a thirst for knowledge.
In a quest to make a better life for her family, Jazimah has attended numerous courses to learn how to be a better farmer – and much more. She has studied development and people forest management; nutrients and integrated pest management, family-oriented management, micro-finance and micro-enterprises for farm group management. She has signed up for field trainings on edible mushrooms, soy beans and maize production. She has also taken seminars on ecology, agricultural technology and public consulting.
With this trove of knowledge, Jazimah has transformed her simple family farm into an integrated farm where she grows rice, estate crops as well as raising livestock and fish. This balanced approach has increased her family’s security, as well as the farm’s productivity: a year’s harvest consists of 7,800 kilograms of paddy, 300 kilograms of peanuts, 800 kilograms of indigovera leaf. She also has 3,000 fish, 3 cows and four goats.
Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Central to Islam is the concept of “Ummah” or community. That sense of community is what makes Jazimah truly special. She freely shares the knowledge she has acquired with her neighbors in what has become a mission to improve the lives of those around her.
As a volunteer agricultural extension worker she has shown farmers in the surrounding villages how to integrate their farms, increase productivity, grow medicinal crops and perennials. To protect the forest, she has worked with them to manage livestock in a sustainable way and educate them about the benefits of guarding the environment. More than anyone, it is now the villagers who value and defend the rainforests in their area.
Furthermore, Jazimah has organized the farmers in her area to develop micro-finance schemes with Bank Raykat Indonesia; market their crops to food processing companies, as well as providing guidance on health issues and teaching children and illiterate adults to read and write. “Knowledge is the key to making our communities stronger,’’ Jazimah says.
Indonesia, with its young and vibrant democracy, is a nation that has weathered economic and political storms along with natural disasters. In the villages of Yogyakarta, however, the people are proving to be more resilient than ever. Farmers and villagers have seen their food security strengthened, and their knowledge and opportunities increased. That could not have happened without the work and the generous spirit of a woman named Jazimah.
More information at:
http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/
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