Communal 'ranch' improves health, livelihoods

Suherdjoko ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Magelang   |  Fri, 10/03/2008 11:37 AM  |  Java Brew

A farmer from Sambak village in Kajoran district, Magelang regency, Central Java, tends to his cattle at the village's communal "ranch". (JP/Suherdjoko)

According to government data, as many as 90 percent of Sambak village residents earn their living as farmers.

The village of Magelang, in Kajoran district, Central Java, has fertile land where rice fields are green, water is plentiful and crops and large trees grow easily.

Farming in Sambak, which comprises an area of 335 hectares located on the Potorono slope of the southern side of Mount Sumbing, is dominated by coconut trees, rice fields, non-staple food crops and fish ponds.

Data from the village administration office shows there are more than 230 goats and 50 cows in this village.

However, if you visit the village, you won't see goats or cows in the vicinity of resident's homes, as in other villages. Nor will you hear the mooing of cows or bleating of goats.

So, where are these animals hiding?

"The data is correct. We do keep goats and cows. We had a ranch that used to be located closer to our homes. That was three years ago. Now, the ranch has been moved further away," Suherman, a Sambak resident, told The Jakarta Post recently.

"We wanted to keep our neighborhood clean," he added.

The new "ranch" is located in the middle of a field some 200 meters from the residents' homes. It has 27 goat pens and cow sheds, which have roof tiles and bamboo walls.

On the goat pen closest to the gateway to the village, a sign reads "Kampung Ternak Makmur" (The Prosperous Cattle Village).

"Our village was once attacked by a malaria outbreak. After that, we agreed to move our cattle further away from our homes," said Riwayat, 42, a cattle breeder.

"We had a number of village meetings to discuss this matter. Then we came to an agreement to move the ranch and we had to agree on whose field would be used as the new site," he added.

The new ranch began to be built in 2005. The old goat pens and cowsheds were moved to the new location, with the residents working together, to save building costs.

The new ranch has proven to be quite beneficial to the villagers. A vet can visit the ranch and check all the cattle at once and prospective buyers can directly negotiate with the cattle owners.

"Most importantly, our houses and our environment are now cleaner. No longer do we smell animal dung near our homes," said Suherman.

The villagers rent the land their new ranch is located on. Every year, each cattle owner must pay Rp 30,000 to the local village administration office, as the land belongs to the village council.

"The rent is quite cheap. We can cover our costs by selling animal dung (for manure). We can sell manure at between Rp 150,000 and Rp 300,000 per pen or shed per year," said Makpul, a local farmer who has five goats.

"The more cattle we keep, the more dung can we sell as manure. We don't have to find buyers as they come to us," he said.

The farmers said they enjoyed the benefits of raising their cattle at the ranch, adding they were able to sell many of their goats around Idul Adha (the annual day of sacrifice in Islam).

The success of the ranch has prompted people from nearby villages to follow suit. Kebon Legi hamlet, for example, has also built a communal ranch, which now houses 80 goats and 8 cows. Meanwhile, residents in Pundukan have also built a communal ranch, where they keep three goats and 20 cows.

Aside from its ranch, Sambak village can also take pride in having been chosen by the Directorate General of Land Rehabilitation and Social Forests as a national model village for the micro management of a river-basin area.

Sambak was chosen as a model village because of its integral conservation and environmental management program.

"Usually a conservation program uses conventional methods and is concerned only with vegetation (tree-planting) and environmentally friendly agricultural techniques," said regional coordinator of the Environmental Services Program for Central Java and Yogyakarta, Nanang Budiyanto.

In Sambak, he added, this pattern has been combined with another conservation model, namely agronomy (maximizing the management of crops) and local management, or the granting of full authority to the local community to manage their own environment.

"In agronomy, locals can plant trees through a conservation process. Here a forest must be beneficial to the local people and must be able to raise local living standards," Nanang said.

"Whereas before local people would plant only pine trees, they now grow other trees that the community living around the forest area can make use of," he said, adding that the locals also grew green plants that their cattle could feed on.

One of the community elders of Sambak village, Bambang Herry Subrastawa, added that the pattern of sustainable conservation adopted by the village was institutional in nature. This conservation program is set forth in a village regulation so that the environment and the forest areas around Sambang are well maintained.

"We have a village regulation on the Institutionalization of the Development and Management of Agrowanawisata (tourism with agriculture) ," Bambang said.

One article in the village regulation regarding forest development and management, for example, stipulates that forest development and management are part of the community-based planning, utilization and monitoring of forest resources through an organizational, multi-stakeholder and partnership strategy.

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