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The government’s call for people to start growing food in their backyards to help counter the rising prices of fruits, vegetables and spices could not have come at a better time. Higher prices for basic foodstuffs and a decline in availability have caused some people to question the benefits of the current food system.

In 2009, Michelle Obama, the US first lady, started a vegetable garden at the White House.

Her mission is to bring food closer to the people, who over the years have become more accustomed to picking their fruits and vegetables from supermarket shelves rather than plants. By trying to re-educate people about where their food comes from, the first lady made a political statement that is critical of the problematic industrial food system.

The Obamas’ vegetable garden underlined the concerns of many food scholars and activists, who for years have been sounding the alarm about the importance of rethinking the food system.

Locavorism, or eating food produced closer to home, has become so popular in America that the word “locavore” was Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year for 2007.

In recently making his case for encouraging backyard food gardening, our own President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono used the garden at his private residence as a way of leading by example.

Another bit of encouragement came in the form of Agriculture Minister Suswono’s national chili seed distribution campaign.

Rather than following the Western trend of gardening, though, it is better to look into our own country’s past for inspiration and, more important, mistakes to learn from.

Growing up in Jakarta in the 1980s, my parents’ backyard garden was filled not only with chili but also ginger, mango, papaya and spinach, among other spices, fruits and vegetables.

Almost everyone I knew in the neighborhood had something delicious growing in their backyard, no matter how small the space was. But the best garden, hands down, was the one planted by one of the neighbors on public land.

Landless himself, the old man — no doubt once a farmer back in his village — brought the wisdom of the land to the city to fill the small strip of land between the front gate of my parents’ house and the road with a cornucopia of spices, fruits and vegetables.

Among his best crops were bountiful cassavas, papayas and bananas. For me, the term “food security” never fails to conjure up the image of that old man’s garden.

Sometime in the 1990s, however, his garden disappeared.

The small strip of land remained, but the cassavas, papayas and bananas were no more after the local government ordered him to clear the land so they could fence it off and grow grass as part of a gentrification project.

Apparently, the cassavas, papayas and bananas were not considered aesthetically pleasing enough.

The only thing that ended up “growing” on that patch of grassland was a warning sign indicating the illegality of interfering with the gentrification project.

The current campaign by the president and the agriculture minister to encourage people to start — or go back to — gardening on their private land needs to be applauded.

But the government can do so much more.

Public land is where the government should effect real change and make an emphatic political statement. It is not enough for the president to point to what he has growing in his own backyard when he has the power to address in what form food security can take place for people without backyards.

While a government-managed community garden is arguably a complicated endeavor, freeing up public land for people who have the know-how to manage it is not.

Scholarly works on public produce and urban agriculture are currently considered cutting-edge in Western academia.

But as the old man from my childhood demonstrated, growing food in available places is old wisdom that has slowly slipped away.

Deprived of his only access to land, the farmer in him was killed by a government that valued a fenced-off grassy patch more than his cassavas, papayas and bananas.

The public school system is another important avenue in which the government should create real changes.


In America, the popularity of school gardening program has corresponded with the Obamas’ White House gardening project. Again, looking at our own history can serve us well in this case.

While school curriculums here no longer included gardening by the time I started my education in the 1980s, my mother fondly remembers her own experience working the land as part of her school days.

Back in the 1950s, she told me, planting, harvesting and foraging were as important and educational as math and science.

More than anything else, what we need is a change in our thinking.

What does it say about us as a nation when our education system creates a generation where everyone wants to be doctors and engineers but nobody wants to be a farmer?

What does it say about us as a society when our public land is filled with manicured grass and inedible flowers rather than food sources for those without any access to land?

Without a more fundamental shift in our attitude, we may miss an important opportunity for our country. Backyard gardening can be the start of something big, but only if the government leads the way.


Magfirah Dahlan-Taylor is a PhD candidate in planning, governance and globalization at Virginia Tech.