A Copy of Nepal in My Favourite Town
When a small village on Magelang, Central Java, become a national internet sensation and how Covid-19 affect local farmers
Growing up as a child in a family who continually visits Magelang once or twice a year, Magelang always has a special place in my heart. This town’s gorgeous panorama never stops to amaze me. Regarding that, it also becomes one of the reasons I extremely concern about the environment.
My family and I prefer to explore nature rather than shopping in another tourism city nearby (Yogyakarta), even though sometimes if we are not lazy enough to deal with the busy street and how crowded every corner of Yogyakarta, we might think to buy souvenirs there before we are going back to Bogor.
This might sound bizarre for foreigners, but for some Indonesian, when someone who travels to another city or country, his/her friends will ask that person to buy local souvenirs for them. If not, his/her friends might think he/she is penurious.
In the previous article here, I said that I really miss Magelang and I think my parents tired enough to hear me asking them when we will visit their home town almost every day. The reason we have not visited Magelang because my father, in his retirement age, have been busy managing his car workshop with his new employees, so he was reluctant to have a quick break just to visit his father.
We finally visited Magelang on last Thursday (20/8). My father and I drove about over 500 km or 311 miles, whereas my mother mostly took a long nap on the back seat. It took about 7 hours 36 minutes to get there. That was not the fastest time to get there. Because of a long holiday, there was congestion on the highway at Bekasi, where there is an intersection that leads to Bandung and Cirebon.
We spent three days and two nights in Magelang. Frankly, I did not have any plans to visit any tourism area, I just want to enjoy being in that city atmosphere. However, since my mother’s big family surprisingly gathered in Magelang without any plan before and I think my mother was eager to visit a new tourism area in her home town, so my father and I just followed whenever she wants.
On the second day, we went to a small village called Dusun Butuh now known as Nepal van Java. This small village located in on the foothill of Mt. Sumbing. The sky was bright, even though not as clear as the day before, so we can see the mountain clearly from my grandpa’s place all the way to the destination.
The journey to my grandpa’s place, which is in the heart of Magelang city to the destination takes about more than an hour with an uphill road all the way there. Every corner of the street offers a wonderful landscape of various plantations, such as tomato, tobacco, chives, celery, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, potato, and so on. I amazed by how fertile the land is, also grateful that this country could provide abundant spices, vegetables, and fruits.
I know it was a reckless decision to visit a tourism place on the weekend and a long holiday. So the situation there was crowded and I think most of them came from cities nearby such as Semarang and Yogyakarta, also from West Java. I noticed that some of them were from Jakarta. They mostly there just took a lot of pictures, took a walk to the other photogenic spots, and then went back home. The same thing goes to me because nought to be explored there. It just a densely populated area on the foothill of the mountains that makes it similar to Nepal.
I am not a fan of this new tourism area; I prefer an open place or more natural on the other side of Mt. Sumbing. That place, called Mangli, also a village located on this mountain foothill. An open space surrounded by tobacco plantations that also offer an appealing view of other mountains nearby, such as Merbabu, Merapi, Telomoyo, and Andong.
Before we went to the parking lot, two women which also local farmers offered my mother, my aunt, and I to buy their broccoli by picking up it straight to the plant. I was surprised by how cheap it was. The woman said that we could take 3 heads of broccoli for 10000 Rupiah or 0.68 USD or 5.96 SEK, whereas in Bogor we can only get one head of broccoli. The price also the same for 3 bunches of carrots.
All the way back to the town, I became more suspicious because of many ripe tomatoes and other vegetables unharvested, even some of them left until they were rotten. I finally got the answer when I visited my Aunt’s place at Parakan, Temanggung, Central Java. She said that the actual farmer gate price of broccoli in her area was one in ten of the broccoli we bought from a local farmer at Butuh Village, approximately 500–1000 rupiah per kilograms. The same price goes to other crops such as tomato. My Aunt said that the falling of vegetable price due to the congestion of logistic from producer area to consumer area because of Covid-19. This pandemic also affects the purchasing power of the Indonesian citizen.
Sadly, this also happened in Magetan, East Java. I know this information when one of my college friends wrote on her WhatsApp status after I came back from Magelang. She said that cauliflower and cucumber price which reached 400–500 rupiah per kilograms from the farmer. She also showed a screen capture of her conversation with a local farmer in Magetan.
This story as I witnessed how our local farmers suffered from this undesirable situation hooked in my mind until now. In my opinion, reflecting on the continuous fluctuation of the live bird farm gate price in broiler chicken, this problem caused by downstream development of this industry still stagnant. Besides, there are other unrelieved issues such as oversupply and unmatch data of broiler population.
The downstream sector will help farmers to preserve their harvest, which a perishable food and to add values of their products. Processing also becomes a part of protecting the environment to reduce food loss. However, the energy and water use that also should be considered to make the processing operation more efficient and more environmentally friendly.
As a part of young Indonesian generations and future leader of this country, I immensely urge Indonesian youngster, especially to those who study and work in the Agriculture sector to take part to solve this one of many problems in the agricultural sector. In addition, young generations also need government, companies, researcher, and investor to support them. I believe with strong collaboration will boost Indonesia’s agriculture sector both upstream and downstream.
