Food and Livelihood Security for Indonesia’s Smallholders

In Indonesia, smallholders have historically practiced agroforestry. Biodiversity remains crucial for climate resilience, health care, and food security in rural communities. Semi-commercial agroforestry is a midpoint for achieving multifunctional agriculture (biodiversity, soil and water conservation, food security, and income) in the climate change era.

agroforestry
sustainability
subsistence
commercialization

1. Introduction

Growing populations and the depletion of agricultural land are creating enormous challenges for the sustainability of food production and supply systems [1]. The declining quantity and quality of agricultural land, together with water scarcity and climate variability, is not only threatening global food security but also overall rural livelihoods that are vastly dependent on agricultural production [2,3]. Approximately 80% of fresh water is used for agricultural activities to support food production, while only about 10% of irrigated water in developing countries comes from reused wastewater [4,5]. In this context, crops in agroforestry systems require less water due to their efficient use of available soil water content (‘green water’) than many monoculture systems [5].

Foods such as grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meat are important to human nutrition [6]; the production of such foods in conventional agriculture has contributed to negative environmental and social effects, e.g., climate change, biodiversity, ecosystem and land degradation, water scarcity, and stressed social structures [7,8]. This is also because the intensification of conventional agriculture mostly relies on chemical fertilizers, excessive water use, mechanization, and hybrid genetic engineering [9,10]. Across the landscape, the conversion of forest land to agricultural land has had an impact on water availability, thus causing the loss of hydrological functions associated with infiltration [11] as well as climate change on a local to global scale [12], trigging a shift to sustainable and multifunctional agriculture [13]. Sustainable agricultural supply chains generate greater production and/or higher agricultural productivity while at the same time achieving enhanced environmental, economic, and social outcomes [14].

Multifunctional agriculture can improve food production and positively impact social and environmental aspects, contributing to sustainable development [8,15]. Combining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the forestry sector (SDG 15) and agriculture (SDG 2) in integrated land management has the potential to achieve three broad groups of SDGs [16]. Agroforestry as regenerative farming by food producers suits the SDGs program [8,17]. Hence, it can potentially be the future of agriculture [18]. Conversely, unsustainable agriculture practices [13] can be transformed into environmentally friendly agroforestry [19]. Agroforestry systems create multifunctional landscapes for income diversity and environmental services (clean water, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and cultural conservation) [20,21]. Land use is often characterized by an integration of forests, agroforestry, agriculture, and settlement areas, which have to meet many interests and conflicting needs to produce products and services that support the SDG agenda [19].

In general, land covered by trees with the dual functions of producing food and environmental services is called agroforestry [22]. Agroforestry must be developed to integrate forestry and agriculture [23]. The forms of an agroforestry system can be a combination of commodities, such as agri-silviculture, silvofishery, silvopasture, agrosilvofishery, agro-silvopasture, and apiculture. The main requirement of an agroforestry system is that there are tree stands as the main component. A ‘forest’, according to the Food Agriculture Organization of Global Forest Resource Assessment (FAO FRA) 2000 program, has a tree canopy cover of >10% and an area > 0.5 ha or 10–30% of the tree canopy area and conservation of tree diversity [16] for climate change mitigation [24] as well as social, market, goods, and ecosystem services [25]. In Indonesia, the forest represents land with a minimum area of 0.25 hectares, and that contains trees with a canopy cover of at least 30%, capable of reaching a minimum height of 5 m at maturity [26]. Agroforestry can provide forest ecosystem functions as well as food and other products. It is a system involving the use of natural resources based on ecology through the combination of trees and crops, with various kinds and benefits of products (social, economic, and environmental), in a sustainable manner [19,21,26].

2. Country Context

In Indonesia, smallholders’ land in rural areas is typically spread among the home garden, fields (tegalan) and community forests with agroforestry practices. In its development, silviculture is defined as establishing and maintaining tree communities that produce tangible or intangible value to human beings, such as timber, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), food, and conservation and ecosystem value [32]. Forest and tree crop products can be a basis for income and food security [21]. Interrelating the concepts of food security, forests, agroforestry, environmental services, and sustainable development is still a challenge for Indonesia [22].

Indonesia’s overall food production failed to meet the demand of its 270.20 million people in 2020 [33]. In 2023, Indonesia’s population reached 277.7 million [34]; however, the overall farming area has decreased by 12.9% annually [35]. Conversion of rice fields to non-agricultural land occurred at a rate of around 80,000 ha per year [36], in the context in which the rate of expansion of such rice fields was around 20,000–30,000 ha per year [37]. The decline in rice production owing to a decrease in paddy fields was by up to 2.4 million tons over five years [38]. Moreover, climate change causes a decrease in rice production by 1.37% of the total production per year [39]. Therefore, the data show that rice imports reached 407,741.40 tons in 2021 [36].

The percentage of the population classified as ‘food insecure’ in Indonesia was 7.9% in 2019 [40]. Food must be accessible to communities in remote areas. In Indonesia, the population is spread over 83,931 villages, of which 3.3% are in forest areas (2768 villages), 22.18% are on the edge of forest areas (18,617 villages), and 74.52% are outside forest areas (62,546 villages). Among those, 99% of the villages located inside the forest depend on agricultural production as their main source of income, which is 93.8% and 79.4% for the villages located at the edge of the forest and outside the forest, respectively [33]. The ability to access food must be accompanied by ensuring viability, stability, and sustainability. Indonesia needs to develop widespread, sustainable, regenerative agriculture [10].

Indonesia’s land area (191.1 million ha) features potential dry land of 144.5 million ha (76%), 42.7 million ha (22.4%) of wetlands, and 4.6 million ha for other uses. Dry land with a wet climate is spread across Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Java (133.7 million ha), and dry land with a dry climate is spread across Eastern Indonesia (10.7 ha) [41]. Nevertheless, based on the FAO FRA 2000 program, the rate of deforestation in Indonesia reached 0.78 million ha/year during 2010–2020. The latest data for 2020–2021 show that deforestation in Indonesia was 113,534.3 ha [42]. The agricultural land expansion rate for rice fields was around 20,000–30,000 ha annually [37].

Indonesia has already committed to promoting sustainable agriculture to achieve food security through more diverse food production systems using local resources [40,43]. Indonesia has 77 types of carbohydrate sources, 26 types of nuts, 389 types of fruits, 228 types of vegetables, and 110 types of spices and seasonings [39]. Local food consumed by a community can be sustainable [10] if it contributes positively to three aspects: (1) the environment (reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sustaining the supply chain, e.g., reducing food loss and reducing packaging; (2) socio-economic (a local identity that can unite communities and provide income); and (3) health (providing healthy, diverse foods and reducing loss and waste [10]. People’s reliance on rice in Indonesia as a source of carbohydrates can be reduced through food diversification, e.g., by consuming tubers, sago, breadfruit, and sugar palm. Several types of tubers as alternative food sources include cassava, sweet potato, suweg (Amorphophallus paeniifolius), arrowroot (Maranta arundinaceae), taro (Colocasia esculenta), kimpul (Xanthosoma sagottifolium), gembili (Dioscorea esculenta), canna (Canna edulis), and porang (Amorphophallus muelleri) [39,44]. These food commodities are produced from agroforestry to various types of land use systems, cultivated by smallholder farmers.

In the era of climate change, one of the growing obstacles to sustainable agriculture is the availability of water resources. Hence, utilizing dry land for food production is a strategic challenge. The Government of Indonesia issued Law no. 16/2014 and Presidential Decree 61/2011 regarding Planning, Implementation and MRV Systems to Achieve Emission Reduction (Rencana, Implementasi dan Sistem MRV untuk Mencapai Penurunan Emisi or RAN-GRK) as part of the national commitment to the Paris Agreement, which includes the development of environmentally friendly (low carbon) agriculture. The Indonesian government issued Minister of Environment and Forestry Regulation No. 9/2021 concerning Social Forestry Management to provide opportunities for communities to gain access to and benefits from forest management. Ministry of Environment and Forestry Regulation 8 Number 2021 concerning Forest Management and Preparation of Forest Management Plans and Forest Utilization in Protected Forests and Production Forests encourages increased productivity of forest land by applying agroforestry and multi-business forestry. Agroforestry practices can also be applied to dry land areas because they are relatively efficient with water resources. Therefore, the option of promoting or linking agroforestry, tree crops, and household food security should be considered a critical theory (sustainable agriculture in climate change) [45] and climate-smart agriculture [46].

3. Food and Livelihood Security for Indonesia’s Smallholders

Agroforestry in Indonesia is complex, as can be seen in the development of agroforestry as a form of community thought in the Indonesian archipelago. It shows the perseverance of agrarian communities in cultivating land that eventually becomes a distinctive hereditary culture in certain niches, thus creating diverse forms of agroforestry in Indonesia. Cultural background, preferences, and needs determine the peculiarities of agroforestry in each area. The influence of the surrounding environment and the information will also affect a person’s decisions [95], including smallholders’ decisions to plant species commodities on their land.

Agroforestry systems increased food production and improved environmental conditions, depending on the land management practices and tree management [96]. Silvicultural practices, such as planting, assisted migration, thinning, or natural regeneration, can cost-efficiently help reduce the impact of climate change on forest structure, composition, and function [97]. Smallholders with agroforestry systems are often aware of functionality in broad contexts, including different product uses, different tree characteristics (e.g., differences in phenology), or risk management options. For example, smallholders manage different species for different purposes, contributing to their livelihoods, addressing competition between species, and assisting ecosystem processes [98]. The changing of a natural ecosystem to agroforestry practices and other uses has implications for livelihoods and ecosystem services [16,99].

Benefits from the impact of tree cover on climate at local, regional, and continental scales require broader acknowledgment [12]. Agroforestry provides smallholders resiliency to dryland conditions and climate change for accessing food, income, health, and ecosystem or environmental stability [29,53].

3.1. Food Security and Agroforestry Systems in Indonesia

The Indonesian smallholder has been developing agroforestry community forests as a source of food, NTFPs and timber since ancient times, demonstrating that community forests can be managed to meet the food needs of smallholders and contribute to national food security. As an illustration, community forests have been shown to contribute 61.34% of the daily food needs of communities, which were produced from 23 types of food crops [100]. In addition, agroforestry practices in community forests have been shown to produce 46.01% of food commodities, consisting of 12 types of food, for example, sugar palm (Arenga pinnata), cocoa (Theobroma cacao) and mango (Mangifera indica) [101]. Agroforestry practices in community forests in Lampung contributed to farmers’ income by 53% and were sufficient for household food security [102]. However, communities with limited landholdings and a homogeneous local culture with traditional rice farming systems produce seasonal employment opportunities, reducing the risk of long-term tree cultivation with limited resources [19,96,103].

The business feasibility of agroforestry is illustrated in the net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and benefit/cost ratio (BCR) in some cases globally. The cases of agroforestry in Indonesia indicate that agroforestry is worthy of being cultivated as a business that achieves profits for smallholders. Income has been derived from timber species or high-value commodity crops such as coffee, cacao, cloves, and candlenuts. However, the commercial value of timber species and high-value commodity crops in agroforestry systems could decrease the availability or diversity of food crops. Smallholders could only cultivate food crops (corn, upland rice, peanut, banana, cassava, etc.) in the initial three years before the canopy of timber species or high-value crops closed [108].

Subsistence, semi-commercial, and commercial categories cannot always be a firm predictor of the prospect of income and welfare for landowners. Many factors make landowners choose this or that model of agroforestry. These factors include (1) the land area, which affects the prospect of land productivity; (2) the need for crops and the financial situation of the landowner; (3) the type and quality of commodities that can be cultivated; and (4) market conditions (which are often influenced by access and transportation, which ultimately affect the demand and selling price of a commodity). The ability of the land to produce economic value can also be different in each area, depending on the tenacity of the cultivator, property security, type of commodity, smallholder’s capital ability, market access, crop quality, and seasonal suitability.

3.2. Food Security and Water Conservation in Agroforestry

In Indonesia, agroforestry has been applied predominantly to dry or marginal land in yards, fields, private forests, buffer lands of forest areas, and community forests. These lands are usually without irrigation, so they are very efficient in using water and relatively resistant to climate change. Although the increase in water productivity due to the microclimatic modification by tree crops tends to be limited [20,114], the existence of forests and trees as an agroforestry system plays a role in soil and water conservation and water use efficiency. Although the greater productivity of agroforestry is mainly due to the higher amount of water used [20,114], an agroforestry system is more resilient in the face of climate change and various drought and flood disasters [21,99,115,116,117]. The water function of natural forests with high biodiversity is impossible to reproduce if changed to oil-palm monoculture with shallow roots [118]. This can be anticipated by planting fruit or nut trees (such as stinky bean and jackfruit) using an agroforestry system, which promotes the development of multifunctional landscapes to conserve or increase the quality of catchment areas [17,119].

Agroforestry increases water productivity in two ways: (1) tree transpiration and (2) the resulting tree biomass [120]. Trees can link local to regional and global water cycles through modification of infiltration, water use, hydraulic redistribution of groundwater, and their role in rainfall recycling. Agroforestry contributes to improving ecosystem services for water, including transmission, buffering peak flows, increased infiltration, water quality, slope and riparian stability, reduced erosion, modified microclimate, coastal protection, and rainfall triggering [17]. Trees also affect a soil’s ability to capture, store, and release water. The presence of litter (organic matter) assists soil in retaining water and improving soil structure and porosity [121]. In areas with limited water resources, the presence of trees as shade for coffee agroforestry systems can protect agricultural crops by reducing soil evaporation and coffee transpiration. Shade trees affect the microclimate (light, temperature, water saturation, vapor pressure deficit) and radiant energy in a system [122]. Tree canopy cover, understorey vegetation, and litter necromass are strong indicators of watershed health in terms of low run-off and high soil infiltration [11].

3.3. Food Security and Biodiversity of Smallholder Agroforestry in Climate Change

Food security is one of the various ecosystem services that can be provided by agroecosystems (Figure 4). If an agroforestry area is focused on obtaining financial profit, then the form of agroforestry only tends to become more monocultural and will lose its multifunctionality [131]. In the era of climate change, the more biodiverse the agroforestry, the higher the carbon absorption and productivity, benefitting the livelihoods of rural communities and protecting nature [103,132]. In contrast to conventional agriculture, this smallholder agroforestry practice is clearly a form of smallholder resilience in obtaining food and livelihoods in the modern era, which positively affects the environment. Therefore, the practice of diverse trees in agroforestry needs to be maintained in order to provide ecosystem services and increase production for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Figure 4. Three ecosystem services from agroforestry systems, adapted from Palacios and Bokelmann, 2017 [133].

There are two issues related to biodiversity in the implementation of agroforestry. First, the biodiversity constituents of agroforestry land: to ensure that agroforestry land has a variety of functions—provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services [95]—the biodiversity of species will contribute positively [134]. Biodiversity will help to reach ecological equilibrium at the household farm prospect, combat climate change, achieve food security, and expand market opportunities for communities [135,136,137,138].

Second, the diversity of animal biodiversity: agroforestry is very likely to provide habitat but will not be able to replace the role of natural forests. Compared to old-growth forests, agroforests supported around 23% fewer species and 47% fewer endemic species [140]. It should also be noted that even in natural forests in Indonesia, wildlife is extremely difficult to find owing to poaching [141], especially on agroforestry land with easier access and where protection of animal biodiversity is not the core business of agroforestry farmers. There have been many studies that explain that wildlife and human conflicts often occur owing to the destruction of habitats whereby wildlife food security is affected by the establishment of agricultural (including agroforestry) businesses [107,142,143,144,145,146].

Tree biodiversity resulting from agroforestry practices is a form of adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Climate change will affect the economic and environmental productivity of agroforestry practices. The higher the biodiversity, the higher the agroforestry productivity in the climate change era [51,138]. Increasing human populations will further increase anthropogenic activities that affect climate change [52,149]. Conventional agriculture’s approach to increasing food production has been proven to have a negative impact on the environment, while agroforestry has been proven to be good from an environmental perspective (water and soil conservation, climate change adaptation, and biodiversity enhancement) [20,150].

4. Conclusions

Agroforestry in Indonesia is a crucial form of land utilization. The practice of agroforestry, particularly among small landholders, demonstrates adaptability to land conditions, household needs, and market opportunities, resulting in a diversity of agroforestry implementations. Most smallholders use agroforestry systems to earn income from product sales, timber as ‘savings accounts’, and food for daily consumption. Some smallholders do not produce food for domestic consumption from their agroforestry practices; however, they generate income from selling products that increase their purchasing power for food needs. Two studies show that agroforestry can contribute to smallholder’s food needs by 46% to 61% and three studies state that agroforestry contributes to small farmers’ income by 51–54%. The contribution of agroforestry to the income of smallholders is greater than that of traditional agriculture.

Furthermore, agroforestry contributes to SDGs through climate change mitigation (SDG 13) since unsuitable agricultural land can still substantially contribute to food provision (SDGs 2 and 15). Traditional subsistence agroforestry practices show high diversity in producing food, medicine, NTFPs, and timber. The commercialization of agroforestry with the intensification of several high-value plant commodities (oil palm, cardamom, vegetables, and dragon fruit) has reduced the environmental services produced in climate change adaptation and mitigation (15% of peer-reviewed case studies). The limited land availability for small landholders poses a constraint to meeting their food and income.

Nevertheless, the role of agroforestry remains highly significant, especially in the context of semi-commercial agroforestry, as it provides irreplaceable social security for small landholders in Indonesia. Semi-commercial agroforestry with a mixture of trees—commercial and subsistence species—has higher diversity, a form of ‘local wisdom’ in maintaining community forest sustainability and contributing to family income and food needs. Smallholder agroforestry practices in Indonesia are shifting from traditional subsistence agroforestry to semi-commercial agroforestry. It is necessary to promote complex semi-commercial agroforestry to maintain productivity in times of climate change with compensation or incentives for smallholders. Agroforestry practices can maintain landscape ecosystems with soil and water conservation and biodiversity to continue sustainably producing food and income for rural communities in an era of climate change. Therefore, it is not surprising that agroforestry practices are at the core of various forestry programs, including peatland, mangrove, critical land rehabilitation, and social forestry. Agroforestry plays a key role in environmental improvement efforts while delivering direct and indirect economic benefits to communities.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/agriculture13101896

© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.