Learning to Truly Eat Local

A few months ago, I stumbled upon this book online—on sale; it's about sorghum. Having seen sorghum in a local bulk store in the past, I was instantly intrigued. At the time, I didn't know what sorghum was and what role it plays in the food distribution in this country. Needless to say, I purchased the book. Thus began my journey down the rabbit hole that is food crisis. Did you know that we have a global food crisis and it is not caused by the shortage of food being produced? Yes, major food wastage also plays a role, but that's not the only one. The number one cause is, actually, food uniformity. We humans used to rely on 30,000 species of plants for food and medicine—now we only largely rely on 30. Sixty percent of our diet, in fact, is made up of only 3 annual crops—rice, wheat and corn (Source: Green Dreamer). It may not seem like much, but before you know it, children are suffering from malnutritions and farmers are planting the wrong kind of crops. This is something that I'm starting to learn recently—and what that looks like in Indonesia. Feel free to read more if you're as intrigued as I am.

It is now widely known that Asians primarily eat rice. We in Indonesia ourselves believe that rice is the epitome of a meal—you're simply not fulfilled if you haven't eaten rice. However, it turns out rice isn't indigenous to all regions in this country. Numerous areas across the archipelago knew of several carbohydrate options, including corn, sweet potato, yam, cassava, various kinds of tubers, sagoo and sorghum—especially regions in the east, such as Maluku, Papua and West Papua. However, with the insurgence of rice, especially within governmental programs, people grow more accustomed to rice—even in places where rice literally cannot grow. Somewhere along the way, local food source is abandoned and forgotten. People prefer to either wait for the government to send them rice or grow some themselves—no matter how painstaking, even futile, the process can be.

As time goes by, children and younger generations refuse to eat other sources of carbs—they only want rice—but rice is getting harder and harder to get in certain regions. The governments cannot keep sending them rice and they cannot grow some themselves, due to the dry climate. As a result, children are not getting enough nutrition and, due to the growing number of demand for rice, the government is importing rice in large numbers. In fact, Indonesians eat more rice than the Japanese—who is famous for their rice production and consumption. Also, rice is one thing, but there's a new trend in town: wheat. With the rise  in popularity of instant noodles across the nation, the demand for it is increasing. This one is even more threatening, as wheat is 100% imported—since it cannot be planted in Indonesia.

How crazy is that?! Funny thing is that we actually have more land, more resources and more food than we think we do—so why the malnutritions and large imports? What can we do to change this?

The solution, actually, is pretty simple: go back to our roots. As I mentioned before, there are a multitude of main food sources that we already have—yet abandoned and forgotten. We now largely only stick to two crops: rice and wheat. Yes, we still grow sweet potato, yam, cassava and corn, but they haven't been our main food source in so long. Then there are sorghum and sagoo—the pretty much forgotten kinds despite being deeply rooted in our culture. These kinds have similar nutritional values to that of rice, and even with less sugar, which makes them friendlier to various health conditions, such as diabetes. Sorghum, for one, is more resilient as a plant. It can grow easily in dry and wet lands, as it doesn't require much water—unlike rice. It can be cooked like rice, made into flour or juiced into drinks like beans. Sagoo, on the other hand, comes in a troves of forests. Its age spans for decades and there are a number of untapped resources, largely located in West Papua—their harvesting will actually help grow more of them. They tend to be rather sticky, although dry variations also exist—can be made into cakes or eaten with meat/fish.

In the world of revitalising and conservation of local, traditional food sources, there is one name to remember: Maria Loretha. Since 2007, she has been hard at work to preserve sorghum in East Flores—and later on throughout the whole of Nusa Tenggara. She encourages local farmers to plant sorghum and assist them to organically domesticate these local superfoods—they used to just grow in the wild, ignored and forgotten. Working together with Kehati Foundation and the Diocese of Larantuka, she has successfully made people in East Flores fall back in love with sorghum—people start to remember the sorghum folktale of old. Meanwhile, in Papua, sagoo is quickly being forgotten by the government. Despite having numerous benefits, not only for nutrition, but also for constructions, sagoo forests tend to either be destroyed to build factories for corporations or repurposed for infrastructure. The people, however, still love sagoo—and the little worms that live in the trees—for their nutritional and cultural value. They realise the importance of sagoo in their daily lives and that they should preserve it. It requires a much bigger effort to harvest and cultivate sagoo forests, however—one that civilians alone cannot muster.

Personally, this has made me become more aware of the food that I eat, where it comes from and what impact I'm creating by eating it. Although I don't live in an area where rice is hard to plant—as far as I know, at least—diversifying my food palate is still a wise choice for the environment. Recently, I also bought this self-published book by Viki Restina Bela. It shows me even more food plants that I didn't know about before—and right here in Java! It truly blows my mind how little plant species that I know and have ever consumed in my 28 years of life. We tend to stick to the same food palate over and over again. Sometimes there are trends, too, that inspire people to eat the same food across the globe—which, unsurprisingly, causes environmental and violent social issues. This needs to reevaluated. In my personal life, I have tried to eat more local for years—opting for locally harvested basil seeds, per se, as opposed to imported chia seeds—but, of course, there are still rooms for improvement. Let us be more conscious about these things and look around us—there's bound to be a plentiful of foods you can eat from your local farmers. Let's support them!

What local food choice have you made lately?