Food Destroyed, Culture Extinct

“Our policy regarding food security is too centralistic.”

Helianti Hilman

That was the response given by Helianti Hilman, founder of Javara and the Food Artist School, when asked for her opinion on the food crisis that—according to the FAO—will be faced by the global community in 2050.

According to Helianti, the food crisis is too widespread to be addressed with centralized policies. Overly centralized policies will not only fail to resolve the food crisis but also potentially create new problems. “Let’s not pretend we can control and feed everyone around the world,” she said.

Helianti’s criticism stems from decades of experience interacting with smallholder farmers. For example, one of her trips took Helianti to Kasepuhan Sirnaresmi in Kasepuhan, South Banten. “This one village has enough rice reserves for the next 20 years. Now I ask, which country has food reserves for the next 20 years?” she said.

Helianti explained that this situation was achieved because the Kasepuhan Sirnaresmi community utilized local wisdom to meet its food needs. This local wisdom—which Helianti also found in many other local communities in Indonesia—she considers the answer to the food crisis. “Let every community be given the opportunity to build its capacity to create food security based on food sovereignty, using food sources that are locally available.”

Helianti’s interactions with these small farmers didn’t actually begin with food or business, but rather with law. Before entering the food business, Helianti worked as a lawyer and legal consultant. However, Helianti’s life has always been inextricably linked with food.

As a “foodie, a cook,” Helianti always makes time to visit local markets and sample local cuisine whenever she travels abroad. Furthermore, she spent her childhood on Mount Ijen. The distance from her home to the nearest town with a market—a four-hour off-road journey—meant that Helianti’s mother had to grow and raise most of their own food. “I didn’t even learn that I had to buy food until I was five years old. I thought I could just go back to the house, get it, and cook it.” These two things are what keep her coming up with ideas for sending various crops to the small farmers she meets while providing legal assistance to various countries around the world.

These ideas apparently turned into a “personal mission” for Helianti when she met with the old farmers who are members of the Integrated Pest Control Farmers Association, an organization whose members are farmers who still maintain local wisdom and practice organic farming.

Many of these old farmers were imprisoned during the early Green Revolution in Indonesia for refusing to plant “new rice” in their fields. Although they were ultimately forced to plant this “new rice” to escape, these farmers continued to preserve their “old rice” seeds by planting them in pots.

However, the impact of the Green Revolution on reducing rice diversity—and other food sources more broadly—remains apparent. Helianti explained that the Green Revolution drastically reduced rice diversity in Indonesia to only around 1,200, down from a previous 7,000.

“Forget it, we’re all getting old. We’ll all die soon. But how can God’s subsidy for Indonesia be passed on to the next generation?” Helianti summarized the messages from the elderly farmers.

Hearing this, Helianti realized that the way to keep Indonesia’s incredibly diverse food culture alive was to “bring it out.”

Leaving her job as a legal consultant, Helianti founded Javara in 2008, which to this day collaborates with farmers, foresters, fishermen, and food craftsmen to become a platform for them to process and present their products to the wider community.

In 2017, Helianti took things a step further by establishing the Food Artists School. Using a hands-on approach, the school aims to provide a learning platform for the local food-based culinary business ecosystem, particularly for the children of “food artists”—an umbrella term for farmers, foragers, fishermen, and food artisans—so they can continue the mission of preserving Indonesia’s food heritage.

“If our traditional food and food culture don’t disappear, there should be no stunting, malnutrition, hunger, or poverty in Indonesian society.” (AR/AM)

This article excerpts a conversation between Helianti Hilman and Hilmar Farid on the podcast JalinTalks with Hilmar Farid. The full conversation can be heard in the episode “Helianti Hilman: Pangan Musnah, Budaya Punah | Jalin Talks w/ HilmarFarid Ep #1”