Archive for June 29th, 2007
Mushrooms might be useless fungi to some — but not to residents of Bulukandang village, Prigen district in Pasuruan regency, East Java.
A village resident, Kaiman, 47, has been able to rebound from economic hardship through cultivating mushrooms.
The father of two has become a successful mushroom farmer and now employs 10 people.
“Mushrooms have really changed my life for the better,” he told The Jakarta Post.
Kaiman’s interest in mushrooms began when financial conditions worsened in 2005 and he could no longer support his family from his earnings as a truck driver, due to a severe drop in the number of customers.
“I had to change course after working as a truck driver for 15 years. That really confused me,” he said.
A friend from Blitar, East Java, asked him to cultivate mushrooms. He was hesitant at first, but decided to give it a go.
He approached a friend in Wonosobo, Central Java, to learn more about mushroom cultivation.
“I stayed in Blitar and Wonosobo for several weeks to learn how to grow mushrooms, but still felt I didn’t know enough.”
He failed every time he tried to grow mushrooms back home, but was determined to keep trying.
He took out a Rp 10 million (US$1,100) loan from a bank, handing over his vehicle ownership documents as collateral. He used Rp 6 million to buy equipment, including a sterilization device and plastic bags, and built a kumbung, or shed made of bamboo walls. He used the rest of the loan to buy other materials needed to grow mushrooms.
“After three months, the harvest was just enough to put food on the table and repay the loan installments.”
Luck, however, was on Kaiman’s side. After six months his harvests increased. He received an order for 10,000 bags of baklok, or growing medium, but had to turn it down because he could only produce 1,000.
His business has thrived ever since. In 2006, he was picked as a trainer to teach Bulukandang residents how to cultivate mushrooms. Now 40 families from the village are involved in growing mushrooms.
The Sampoerna Foundation helped set up a course and provided assistance in the form of 1,000 bags of baklok worth Rp 30 million, distributed to 20 families, payable on a 50:50 profit-share basis.
“Nearly all mushroom farmers in Bulukandang are working together to cultivate and market mushrooms,” said Kaiman, who now owns two 20×70 meter kumbung and enjoys a net profit of Rp 7.5 million per month.
Each kumbung is divided into two rooms; one is used to germinate spores, while a dark room is used to grow the mushrooms. The whole process — from spore to harvest — takes approximately 45 days.
Kaiman, who represents mushroom farmers in Bulukambang, hopes the government will provide soft loans to boost production in order to meet the growing demand for mushrooms.
“We have had to turn down weekly export orders of 500 kg of mushrooms to Taiwan and China due to limited capital.”
Bulukandang mushrooms are currently only being distributed to places near Pasuruan, including Surabaya, Malang and Mojokerto.
ID Nugroho, The Jakarta Post, Pasuruan
June 29th, 2007
KEDIRI, Indonesia, June 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s top cigarette maker, PT Gudang Garam Tbk (GGRM.JK: Quote, Profile, Research), played down concerns on Monday over government moves to cap industry output as it launched a low-tar cigarette to help lift its performance.
The mild cigarette segment has been dominated by Handaya Mandala Sampoerna (HMSP.JK: Quote, Profile, Research), a unit of Philip Morris, the tobacco arm of Altria Group (MO.N: Quote, Profile, Research), while Gudang Garam has focused on lower-margin mass market products.
Analysts have blamed Gudang Garam’s strategy for its declining performance, because the majority of its customers are more sensitive to prices. Rival Sampoerna, which targets urban smokers, enjoys a steadier revenue stream.
Widijanto, Gudang Garam’s marketing director, admitted that company had not sufficiently catered to the low-tar sector as he unveiled the “Surya Slims” brand. Surya means sun in Indonesian.
“We see an opportunity in this segment. That’s why we are following the demand from the market,” Widijanto said.
The executive, speaking at the firm’s home town in East Java, also said he was not worried by government moves to control output.
The government recently revealed plans to start limiting cigarette production to 240 billion sticks by 2010 in a tentative move to curb smoking in the world’s fifth-largest tobacco market, lifting the cap to 260 billion in 2015.
“We will do business as usual. We won’t be affected,” Widijanto told reporters.
The number of smokers in western countries has fallen, but in Indonesia, where cigarettes cost as little as $1 a pack, the number has risen to a third of its 220 million people from a quarter in the previous decade.
Nonetheless, Indonesian smokers have been increasingly opting for mild and low-tar cigarettes rather than the most popular clove cigarette, know as kretek.
Indonesians smoked an estimated 220 billion cigarettes last year, the same as in 2005 but below a peak of 239 billion in 2000, according to government data.
According to the World Health Organisation, about a quarter of deaths in Indonesia in 2005 were caused by tobacco, and 80 percent of lung and respiratory cancer cases were due to smoking.
But the industry remains a powerful lobby group, particularly since it is estimated to support employment of 7 million Indonesians.
The industry expects to pay 42 trillion rupiah ($4.8 billion) in cigarette excise taxes this year, up from 11 trillion in 2001.
© Reuters 2007
June 29th, 2007
The Indonesian National Museum officially opens its new building
Last Wednesday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono inaugurated the new wing of the National Museum. The old building was known to the Jakartanese as Museum Gajah (the Elephant Museum) for its elephant statue in front of the building. The statue was a gift from King Chulalongkorn from Thailand when he visited the country in 1871. The museum was also called Gedung Arca (the Statue building) for the collection of statues it exhibits inside. In the inauguration it is officially stated that the new wing will be called Gedung Arca, while the old building will be referred as Gedung Gajah.
The Age of Enlightenment in Europe during the 18th century was the supporting motif behind the founding of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences) on April 24, 1778. The scientific orientation behind their motto “Ten Nutte van het Algemeen” or “For the benefit of all” made this independent society widely known. One of its founders J.C.M. Rademacher donated a house in downtown Batavia and also his collection of artifacts and books to the institution which later became the seed of the National Museum.
During the British administration, Sir Stamford Raffles directed the institution. It moved to a new building as a museum and the meeting hall for the Literary Society. In 1862, due to the rapid growth of its collections, the Dutch Government decided to build a new museum in its present location (it was known as the Koningsplein West). The museum was officially opened in 1868.
The inauguration of the new wing comes after a long delay as the development of the museum was started in 1994 before the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis hit Indonesia. The new museum building also has temporary exhibitions on offer.
Presently, inside the building there is an exposition of the Majapahit Kingdom. An archeological dig in Trowulan, East Java, gave us insights into 14th century Java civilization. Under the glory of the Majapahit Kingdom, the history was written in the lontar script Negarakrtagama. The unification of small kingdoms under the patronage of the Majapahit Kingdom was also recorded in a Chinese manuscript. The need for unification was something crucial to be able to lead or be known in the region.
Artifacts found at the archeological site, together with manuscripts on the same topic, show us the development of technology, basic religion tolerance shared by the ancestors, as well as the history of trade and economic development.
The permanent exhibitions are now arranged into a theme that stresses the nation’s motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (Unity in diversity) — the realization of Indonesia’s different cultural backgrounds that should unite us as one big multicultural country.
The museum has a number of sections. “Man and the Environment” explains the geological events that helped create the huge number of islands (more than 13,000 small islands with five big islands) in Indonesia. The “Science, Technology, and Economy” section provides information about all aspects that involve human civilization from the prehistory to more recent times. “Social Organization and Human Settlement,” “Gold and Ceramic Heritage,” “Art” and “Religion” are also sub-themes found in the museum.
In his opening speech the president reminded us of the importance of putting artistic values beside the logical and ethical values in perspective. Artistic values could be a medium to seek the implementation of understanding and mutual respect. He also commented on the era of environmental awareness and the information revolution in this fast-changing globalized world. While hot issues can spread quickly throughout the world, he said Indonesians should remember that our differences should help us to color our culture, to seek for the unifying factors that could glue our differences and prove that our national motto is true.
The speech seemed to resonate with another temporary exhibition that is taking place in a semi-open air courtyard between the old and new buildings. This is a solo exhibition of Iriantine Karnaya, a well-known Indonesian artist who is presenting her works in contemporary installation art.
She expressed her sadness over the situation of her country in her installed work titled “Menu Hari Ini” (”Today’s Menu”), which describes how mushrooms exist in every region of the world. How these mushrooms are displayed on the table shows how varied different cultures are. She is also worried to see the speed of how news spreads, irregardless of borders. She is afraid that people are losing their capability to retreat, think and mull over whether the news is “real” or the “truth,” as reality and truth can be different depending on one’s perspective.
The curator of the exhibition, Wicaksono Adi, quoted the opinion of Marshall McLuhan that stated more than 40 years ago that “the medium is the message” and that an image portrayed in media sometimes is taken as “reality.”
An artist sometimes seems to be an individual working independently. Freedom of expression is something that is usually related to artists. Yet, artistic works could show us the history of the era through the eyes of the artist or through the eyes of its collectors. A personal message could also be conveyed through artistic work, while a personal opinion could also serve the spectator’s perspective.
Two different eyes with the same tears dropping (as seen in her exhibits titled Vision 1 and Vision 2) are present through the installation. They show Iriantine Karnaya’s tears; she weeps over the world’s wars, she weeps over the dominance of glittering images which are not certainly genuine (as seen in “Today’s Menu”), and she weeps over the system that contaminates pure minds in (Mencari Peluang or “Looking for opportunity”).
She notes that contemporary art gives the spectator the chance to have their own perspective, so I wrote a piece for wikimu.com titled “Menu Hari Ini, Makan Apa atau Makan Siapa?” (”Today’s Menu, What’s to Eat or Who’s to Eat?). I came to the realization that aiming only to be on top could make you push others to fall and that the poor and those whose struggle to be able to stand would never reach the opportunity to make it to the top. When those in the lower social strata are thinking of what they can eat, the big players are thinking about how to take somebody else’s dish.
©2007 OhmyNews - Maria Margaretta Vivijanti
June 29th, 2007