29 November 2024

Names and specific locations have been changed or redacted.

Morning with Pak [redacted] (roughly 75-year-old farmer)

I stayed the night in his house. The men are discussing something in [redacted] related to [redacted], and I watch football on the small TV with one of the young men, [redacted] (21 years old). We communicate via Google Translate, and when the game ends I decide to go to sleep. I am right next to the living room, and the lights stay on, and talking continues a long time (maybe till 1am?).

The living room is smoky with cigarette smoke, and it wafts into my room as well (the only barrier is a small curtain that doesn’t keep the light out).

The next morning, sounds and lights on from 5am+.

I am woken up at 6:20.

Nasi Goreng for breakfast, cigarettes are out already.

Pak [redacted] rides like a madman to get to farm — one of the longest 10 minutes of my life in the back of that motorbike → lots of accelerating and slowing down.

Get to farm and wife and daughters already there working on seedlings.

He gets out a big blue plastic barrel and starts filling it with a plastic bucket. His wife starts helping and he fills it imprecisely with plastic spoonfuls of herbicide (out of a 3L plastic thing), and then more chemical from a smaller white bottle. Finally, he mixes it all together.

There are people around — his wife who is helping, his daughter and son in law, another man who I think is a day-labourer.

Next Pak [redacted] gets the gas pump going (like a small generator looking thing maybe 0.4m x 0.8m).

He then runs to get a rope coiled up, attaches a spray on the end.

They've connected the pump to the liquid pesticide before he can attach the head, and it goes everywhere. While it's still running he shouts back at them and tries to screw the head on. Once he gets it on he starts spraying the tomatoes row by row, and almost just in time the labourer shows up again to be moving the ropes so that while he is going row by row the rope is not tangling or putting pressure on the supports. They clearly have a well-worked system.

In the next field there are many people working at once. There are 2 men making holes for seedlings with wooden poles, and maybe 5 women placing the seedlings in the holes. They carry 10s of seedlings at a time in a weaved basket and set it down as they plant the seedlings in the holes. On the side there are some more people doing something — either working with the seedling patch, or spreading manure(?) to ground to prepare it. The men seem much more happy to entertain me / relaxed, while the women are much more serious and in their work. Everyone wears hats and long sleeves, wellies / galoshes. As I am squatting by the side watching what's happening in this field, a man starts working with a hoe right by me, we talk a bit. I ask if he owns the land and he says no, he just works here. It turns out the man in black in the middle who is going around inspecting the plants and picking stuff out once in a while is the "boss". I ask [redacted], who checks with Pak [redacted], and the rationale for so many labourers apparently is to have it all done at once.

Pak [redacted] finishes the spray and he tells the labourer to go back to have it switched off. As the labourer walks back calling out, Pak [redacted] walks the spray back and continues spraying just the ends of the rows as it still runs. The labourer gets to the end and starts coiling the yellow hose.

I am noticing that all the little bits of wood in the corners of the rows protect the plants as a rope is pulled past the corners.

The labourer seems to have an awareness of the toxicity of the pesticide, and I see him wiping his hands with leaves he's picked up + has his face mostly covered with a balaclava. Pak [redacted] doesn't seem to mind.

As they go his wife is standing by the barrel as the generator runs, and she stirs the liquid every so often.

In a nearby field a man had a metal canister that he carries like a backpack. With his left hand he pumps it, and with his right hand he holds a long metal spray. He is only spraying onto the soil and this makes me think this is fertiliser, not pesticide.

There are chopped plants (branches, leaves) lying in a heap between 2 farms. There is also some old produce (maybe a previous harvest cycle) lying on the path here and there (mostly cassava so far that I've noticed).

Pak [redacted] has got tomatoes and other plants at very different stages, so crops appear to be staggered and that must keep him quite busy (not a situation where everything is at the same stage and there's a break period).

[redacted] says that if it rains today, Pak [redacted] has to do the spraying again in 2 days — so presumably in the rainy season this happens every 2 days! Can see why it would be expensive.

Pak [redacted] says at the start of season the tomatoes didn't get enough water so now they are less good.

Turns out the labourer is his first son! And the two women helping with tomato seedlings earlier were both his daughters. So seems like it's something of a family affair! Even though everyone has their own plots too.

Pak [redacted] finished by 8:30, but hangs about with wife who is planting seeds with daughters.

We move to Pak [redacted]'s daughter's field. Daughters (3 & 4) are planting seedlings. The supports and plastic bags are there from last season. They can't afford to replace plastic this time so they are reusing it.

There is a lady who comes by who is a mobile "warung" — she brings coffee and snacks to sell. The farmers seem to like her.

[redacted] brings food for the family from the hotel. I say we don't have time to join them, as we don't have long to do interviews. So they take a break to eat as a family and share with the man from the neighbouring plot who comes to sit with them.

29 November 2024