In 1983, our team (from the University of Hawaii, North Carolina State and the Indonesian Center for Soils Research) began a multi-year program in Sitiung, West Sumatra. We began our work using a Farming Systems approach, living in a village and working collaboratively with local farmers. The Indonesian policy at the time called for food crops development, whereas our on-the-ground approach quickly revealed the inappropriateness of such a focus. The soils were among the most acidic our soil scientists had ever seen; the rains came (or didn’t come) unpredictably; topography was steep or undulating; local systems—shifting cultivation systems that included extensive tree crops—were so diverse in content that there was no time for the intensive field crop management initially envisioned by scientists and policymakers (most of whom came from densely populated Java and were unfamiliar with the “Outer Island’ conditions of Sumatra).
A home and garden in Piruko, close to where the author’s research was compiled. Photo by Carol J. Pierce Colfer.
We studied the existing systems, and found that people carefully matched soil and other conditions to the crops they chose to plant. So, vegetables were planted near the river in the more fertile soils, which included areas that were managed communally. Rice was planted by everyone. Some rice was planted in paddy fields owned and managed by women in matrilineages; other rice crops were planted in fields newly cleared of forest and owned by men. These latter fields were the first stage in a process of orchard development (at that time, rubber was the usual crop); coffee and fruit trees were planted in the home garden where they could be easily managed.
Carol J. Pierce Colfer in Sitiung, Indonesia in 1984. Photo by Richard G. Dudley.
Gender assumptions backfire
Although researchers initially assumed that men were the main farmers, we discovered that among the indigenous folks (the Minangkabau), the women were the more active, particularly in field crop production. Among the in-migrants (Javanese, Sundanese), both sexes were involved, with women almost invariably doing the planting. In one case, we’d explained some of our early collaborative experiments to the men, who’d failed to pass along the information, resulting in varied planting errors.
In another case, the collaborating Minangkabau men refused to cultivate the soil, preferring their traditional custom of making holes in the ground into which seeds were dropped by women. When the time came to assess relative yields, we found that the simpler Minangkabau method yielded results as good or better than those of farmers who had laboriously hoed their fields (according to our direction). The topsoil was so shallow that turning it over reduced the availability of what little fertility and organic matter existed!
Local knowledge points to ACM approach
Again and again we found that local knowledge was superior to our own in this particular human and ecological context. Local people’s customs influenced what they were willing and able to do; and often these customs reflected an efficient and productive adaptation to local edaphic, climatic and human cultural conditions. In the end, we concluded that a marriage of local and conventional scientific knowledge yielded the best outcomes. These experiences led to the development of the adaptive collaborative management approach, which expands such collaboration to incorporate ecological issues more substantively.
Read more
The Equitable Forest: “Diversity, Community, and Resource Management”
The Complex Forest: “Communities, Uncertainty, and Adaptive Collaborative Management”
An Indigenous Agricultural Model from West Sumatra: A Source of Scientific Insight
Carol J. Pierce Colfer is an anthropologist who has spent her four-decade career working in interdisciplinary contexts. For the past two decades, she has been affiliated with the Center for International Forestry Research, working on issues of relevance for people living in and near forests. She is now situated at Cornell University, maintaining her connection with CIFOR, working on gender issues related to forests, with a continuing interest in Southeast Asia.
Top photo, “Rubber tree plantation in Indonesia,” by Ryan Woo for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
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