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    WELCOME TO THE FARM-iLAB!

    Organic farming is one of sustainable agriculture concepts which enable us to process agricultural system from upstream to downstream process. FARM-iLAB aims to promote organic farming process to the local community thus they can improve their prosperity and at the same time protect the environment resilience and natural resource conservation. From upstream process, FARM-iLAB promotes reducing the using of chemical fertilizer to the lowest level to the farmers. The using of chemical fertilizer continuously will affect to the decreasing of soil fertility and soil microbe population. While at downstream process, FARM-iLAB empowers the locals (especially women and young farmers) to process the raw materials which harvested from their farming land to become organic product with higher value and nutrition contents.

  • FARM-iLAB MATERIALS

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    Brassica rapa var. parachinensis L.

    Be creative with the vegetables

    We are working with:

     

    Organic vegetables

    Why we choose vegetables? First, vegetables grow quite fast. We can harvest them at least 2-6 months, depends on type of vegetable we grow. Second, vegetables contain vitamin and essential minerals such as vitamins A, C, E, and calcium which can increase cell growth and also build body tissue. Eating vegetables can reduce the risk of disease (heart disease, cancer, cholesterol, obesity, etc.). Simply put, vegetable could be our ‘medicine’ to prevent the diseases.

     

    Organic Food as ‘Medicine’

    Many people should pay for medicine or medical treatment in the hospital. Actually, we can reduce cost for our health treatment once we can control our food supply. Even though vegetable brings benefit to us, but there are still many people who do not like to eat vegetable. One of the reasons is because of the taste. Here, we try to bring vegetable to be tasty food with their ‘medicine’ role.

     

    Local Farmers and Women

    Organic vegetable is not really a new thing for the locals. They usually plant vegetables while they are waiting for harvesting period of paddy or corn. However, they are still lack of creativity on how to process their vegetables to be not only healthy but also tasty. And here we come!

     

    Nutritious Chef

    It is one of the most important things. To cook nutritious food, we need the chef who understands how to cook organic food and talking about nutritional content of our food. The outcome of our ILAB is to give the locals additional skill and creativity to be, at least, a chef who cook nutritious ingredients and serve them as a nutritious food for their own selves.

     

    Markets

    Costumer validation is an essential thing to do through our ILAB. We need to confirm whether our organic food is acceptable and meet the market.

     

    Social Entrepreneur

    Our final goal is to create new social entrepreneur from local young farmers and women. We hope our ILAB could create independence to our locals thus they can sustain with organic farming. Moreover, they also can share the story behind their product and expose the benefit thus it could broaden ideas about ‘what entrepreneurs can do with food’. It can go beyond just a food product. We create save and healthy food product. And also tasty foods!

  • HOW TO RUN FARM-iLAB EXPERIMENTS?

    What do we need to do and how they work

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    Grow our organic vegetable!

    Plant and be organic

    In this step, we give the locals freedom to choose kind of vegetable they want to grow, considering they have their own preference on what they like to eat. We give them consideration based on the vegetable planting period. The best choice is vegetables with planting period about 2-3 months thus they just need short time period to harvest the organic vegetable. We (ILAB members and the locals) collaborate to provide vegetable seeds, organic fertilizer, organic soil, and build the greenhouse paranet.

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    Organic Food Lab Experiments

    Find out your recipe

    During planting period, we invite the nutritious chef to do the experiment on cooking the organic vegetable to be organic food. Again, the locals have freedom to decide what kind of food they want to cook (snacks, main course, desert, pastry, etc). ILAB members will give consideration on consumer preference (taste, price estimation, and nutrition contain). Nutritious chef will give consideration on picking best ingredients, best treatment to the vegetable, and the best serving method. We expect at the moment we close to harvesting, an ultimate recipe as Clashty (Clean, Save, Healthy, and Tasty) food has been created.

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    Checking Clashty Food Nutrition Facts​

    Make sure your food is clashty

    This step is important to discover the story and benefit behind our clashty food. The food samples we already made are sent to the National Agency of Drug and Food Control to know their nutrition content.

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    Market Experiment​

    Discover your consumers

    During planting period, we also do costumer validation by bringing the food to the market and ask their feedback. We focus on students and young employees (age 15-30). However, our product is also suitable for all ages.

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    Product Optimization​

    Optimize your strategy

    This step includes packaging strategy, business feasibility analysis, and marketing strategy.

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    Harvesting and Produce Clashty Food​

    It's time to cook

    We harvest the organic vegetables and bring them to the kitchen. It is the moment to produce our Clashty recipe!

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    Clasthy Food Goes to Consumers!​

    picture source: https://www.indoindians.com/7-mustvisit-healthy-cafes-and-restaurants-in-bali/

    At least, the clashty food will meet the people who live in that village. ILAB members will help the entrepreneur to promote the clashty food through social media and local newspaper. If we succeeded to sell clashty food to local market, the entrepreneur has opportunity to expand their product to the larger market.

  • FARM-iLAB MEMBERS

    We've got a top notch team!

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    Fahmi Dwilaksono

    YSEALI Academic Fellow East-West Center Fall 2017

    Fahmi received his Bachelor degree in Biotechnology at Sumbawa University of Technology. He is the member of Friends of the Earth chapter Sumbawa since 2013. His project now is Binong tree (Tetrameles nudiflora) plantation which becomes the place for forest honeybee to make their honeycomb. He also involves in mangrove ecosystem conservation in Labuan Burung village which is projected to be ecotourism spot in Sumbawa. He became staff of Human Resource Development Division in Indonesia Friends of the Earth 2014/2015. Currently he is working as General Manager Assistant at Sumbawa Technopark, an integrated technology-based area as a new center for economic growth in Sumbawa. He is responsible as daily manager at office area, becomes field executive of Sumbawa Technopark events (trainings, public lecture, student mentorship for competition, technology and innovation competition), and responsible to biogas project development.

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    Jason Lum

    YSEALI Academic Fellow East-West Center Spring 2018

    Mr. Lum is currently a third year Engineering Entrepreneurship student at Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP). He is involved actively in the University's program and most significantly was the student representative council. He always surprises everyone with his knowledge in environmental issues, which is not his major. He thinks that the youth today, who are also the future leaders of tomorrow, should not underestimate their own power because it can change the world to a better place to stay.

  • What We Accomplished: Chapter Sumbawa

    We harvested the organic products and create our clashty food

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    Organic vegetable planting and harvesting

    Successfully planted and harvested our organic bok choi

    Vegetable was planted on June 11, 2018 and we harvested them on August 1, 2018. We planted bok choi organically and successfully sold it to the market! The farmers were excited with Farm-iLab project. In the end, we did not limit them to plant pokchoi only inside of paranet of by using polybag. The farmers voluntary expanded planting area and growing pokchoi directly on the soil. They realized that organic farming has better sustainability comparing to conservative farming which depend on chemical fertilizer. The main problem which addressed through this project is how to expand the benefit of organic farming into larger area such as paddy and corn land, considering that these two commodities still need large amount of chemical fertilizer to support their growth.

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    Organic Food Experiments

    Equipped Community with Proper Skills

    A workshop about organic farming was held for women and farmers in Jorok village related to basic concept of organic farming and post-harvesting product handling, and the second was business feasibility analysis. Through this workshop we successfully created tortilla bok choi. According to organoleptic test, pokchoi tortilla required ingredients modification, such as adding tapioca flour to increase crisp texture and salt to increase the savory taste.

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    Product Optimization and Market Experiment

    Transformation of the healthy snack

    We did three times experiment to optimize our clashty food. We used various kinds of vegetables as the materials. The results showed that celery tortilla gained the best result among all samples. However, through a series of organoleptic tests, the panelists suggested that celery tortilla is best changed to become cracker because the texture of our tortilla was too thick. Meanwhile, we also found trouble to shape tortilla as thin as commercialized product. Therefore, our clasthy snack turned from tortilla to cracker.

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    Checking Clashty Food Nutrition Facts

    What's inside the food

    According to nutrition test result from Laboratory of Nutrition Bogor Agricultural University, Celery cracker made by Farm-iLab contains 69.56% carbohydrate, 11.33% protein, 11.96% fat, 6.03% food fiber, 4.71% water content, and 2.44% ash content. We still need vitamin and mineral content to complete the test.

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    Clasthy Food Goes to Consumers

    Let's Eat!

    Farm-iLab and Dapur Mumtaaz had finally released our celery cracker for public. We sold the product for the first time through Sail Moyo Tambora cultural event which was held on September 9-23, 2018. The price of the cracker was IDR 10,000 per pack (80 grams/pack). Not only that, we also promoted celery cracker through Science and Technology Congress at Samawa University on September 24, 2018. We gained good responds through those events. We succeeded to sell 48 packs of celery cracker at that moment. Through this selling, the net profit was IDR 96,000 or 20% from the total selling.

  • What We Accomplished: Chapter Perlis

    We composted the waste and grow our own vegetables.

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    Germination

    A stepping stone to grow the vegetable

    On 14th July 2018, we went to the schools to conduct organic farming workshop for high school students. Before getting our hand “dirty” with practical works, we started with briefing and introduction to make sure everyone clears. Then, each volunteer was assigned into different groups to assist the participant in doing the germination. We used egg paper cartoons to replace plastic grow starter tray. Our main idea was to teach the student to be resourceful by using the resource around us wisely. Moreover, the paper egg carton is biodegradable. We can bury it together with the plant into the soil. The germination process is important as it can activate the root growth and ensuring a healthy plant.

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    Compost Making

    Organic waste to fertilizer

    We also taught the student how to make compost by using Takakura composting method. A fermentative microorganism is required in order to compost the waste. These can be obtained on the surface of fruits and vegetables. We make up salt water and mix with the fruits and vegetables peel. Once everything is placed in the container it should be closed. The fermentative microorganism will proliferate in 3-5 days. We also make the leaf mold fermenting bed using the fallen dry leaves.

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    Building Greenhouse

    Transfer the plant to the real world

    One weeks after the germination process, on 21th july 2018, we transferred the plant the greenhouse. We added the liquid fertilizer which is ready and mix well with the leaf mold, and let the time do its job. From time to time, we just need to add more waste into the container to make compost. Finally, we set schedule for the student and volunteers to water the plant and put compost. After discussion, the best time to water the plant was in the morning around 8 am everyday before the temperature is getting hot to avoid water evaporation. The compost was put once a week.

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    Harvesting and Selling the Vegetable

    It's the time!

    On 1st September 2018, we went back to the schools. The vegetable grew well and ready to be harvested. We taught them how to harvest and package the vegetable for selling. We were able to harvest a total of 120 kg of vegetables which includes salad, water spinach, lady fingers, chili and egg plant. We taught the students how to sell the product and set the price. The product were sold to the local community and teachers in school. The feedback from our customer was pretty good and we were able to make a 100 USD profit from the sale.

  • Acknowledgement

    This project was supported by U.S. Department of State. We thank our mentors from East-West Center (Mr. Lance C. Boyd and Ms. Christina Monroe) who provided insight that greatly assisted this project. We thank to the people of Desa Jorok, Kecamatan Unter Iwis (Sumbawa, Indonesia) and students of SK Simpang Ampat Primary Schools and SMK Syed Saffi Secondary School (Perlis, Malaysia) for the cooperation during this project. We would also like to show our gratitude to PT. Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara for their support to this project. We are also immensely grateful to Sobat Bumi Sumbawa, students and lecturers of Sumbawa University of Technology, and the people of Sumbawa for their comments and insight to our product. We also thank to Mr. Fariz (YSEALI EWC alumni 2016) and Ms. Melinda (APLP alumni) for their great insight and sharing which are really meaningful for this project.

  • Have any questions?

    We are happy to answer your questions!

    Jalan TamboraRT 004RW 007Kelurahan Brang Biji, Sumbawa Besar, NTB, Indonesia-84318