Geophytes cultivation dilemma in Indonesia: Climate change disaster mitigation, investment, and impact on the environment

Abstract

Climate change affects farming activities, leading to a greater impact on food security. Indonesia has the potential for a wide variety of geophytes that can be utilized for food security. However, geophytes are underutilized crops, and our staple food is still dominated by rice. This study aims to explore the potential and obstacles in geophytes development for strengthening food resilience in Indonesia. The methods used in this research were surveying and interviewing 30 “porang” and “beneng” taro farmers between January 2022 to April 2022 to determine the potential of tuber development and its market regarding climate change. The research was carried out in Ciamis and Tasikmalaya Regency, West Java, Indonesia. The result shows that geophytes are low maintenance which helps in reducing GHG emissions. Unlike grains, geophytes are commonly shade-tolerant, more tolerant to drought stress, and resilient on marginal land. However, the difficulties in the geophytes crops development are the unstable prices, and the market sometimes is still very segmented and obscure. Meanwhile, to start planting geophytes on a large scale has an environmental problem and a significant investment risk for farmers, especially farmers with limited land and capital. Therefore, enrichment of geophytes planting under the state land stands may be an option for mitigating climate change and overcoming food security.

Challenges to achieving the social forestry goal of alleviating poverty in Eastern Indonesia

“…Porang tuber The price of porang tuber is very low and farmers' investment has failed [46] The market and marketing of products, especially in Eastern Indonesia, are closely related to road access, the reliability of sea transportation, and the existence of downstream industries. Infrastructure development is a critical asset for reducing poverty and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) states that strengthening transportation facilities will improve market access, reduce transportation costs and travel time, and improve public services, health, education, and household finances [47,48].…”

Cultivating Porang Plants (Amorphophallus Oncophyllus Prain) Using Agroforestry Patterns: Maintaining Ethnoscience in North Lombok Regency

“…Currently, porang tubers are shipped in semi-finished form, such as making chips, which shows that opportunities for cultivating porang are also increasingly wide open (Ningtyastuti et al, 2023;Nugrahaeni et al, 2021;Nurlina et al, 2023). The development of porang plants has promising prospects with high economic value; moreover, growing porang does not require technology and large capital because, with one planting, there is no need to plant seeds again (Pieter et al, 2022;Riptanti et al, 2022). Developing a porang-based agroforestry pattern is easy for farmers, and the results can meet requirements and improve welfare (Mufidah et al, 2021).…”

“…Community forest management using an agroforestry pattern is very open to development so that forests not only store natural resources in the form of wood, but there are still many non-timber potentials that can be benefited from, one of which is through agroforestry. Porang with agroforestry can also provide significant environmental benefits (Pieter et al, 2022). Apart from that, agroforestry systems can also increase biodiversity and improve surrounding microclimatic conditions, which have a positive impact on ecosystem balance and maintain environmental sustainability (Irianto et al, 2023).…”