By Yuk Yi Lam

Agriculture in all over the world has currently faces major environmental challenges. Applications of fertilisers and pesticides in farming and China are among the highest in the world. Overuse of chemical pesticides damaged the soil and land cause a lot of environmental problems, such as soil erosion, soil pollution and harm to human body. Pesticides harm to human and environment, but why many farmers in the world are still using it? Pesticides gave farmer a more convenience way to plan and they can mass produce it. Also, the fact is farmers have not always benefited from adoption of sustainable practice. Not only in China have an issue of low environmental awareness, the solution to improve the environment issues is to educate the young generation and farmers.

In Yogyakarta Indonesia, I visited a real organic farm ‘Bumi Langit’, their main ideas is not using any chemical pesticides. Bumi Langit’s owner jj claimed that they follows a permaculture model which also call permanent agriculture. The science system developed by Bill Mollison in Australia. Encouraging and allowing the communities to live sustainably, while at the same time preserving natural ecosystems, as Joyce(2016) mentioned that “Permaculture is designed to work with nature rather than against it, unlike many modern-day agricultural techniques.” Besides, he also conducting educational programs for local student and universities to demonstrate the issues and teaches them how to minimise the impacts on the Earth by permaculture. Bumi Langit also run as a restaurant everyday from morning till 3:00pm, to let visiter to try their organic products and they bring food in to the organic market in Yogyakarta on every friday. From my visit to Bumi Langit, a farmer told me that they only glow food for what they need and not mass produce. He claimed that people usually produce more than what they need and it’s unsustainable, he give an example like they glow 5 papayas, there family only need 2of it, then they will left 3 on the trees and the bird will come an eat it or leave it till it drops and it will become the compose and seed. The example shows that  Bumi Langit mimics nature’s way of recycling all organic waste is returned back into a functioning system. They also used dry plants such as cucumber to reuse as a shampoo, he said it’s more nature and no chemical in it.

It’s another example of using leftover to made a cleanser in Hong Kong, by using fruit leftover to make it and it’s eco friendly and surprisingly easy to make.

Bumi Langit is not run by government and they produce what they need, even electricity and food. The second design solution doesn’t cost any money, everyone can do it at home and it’s easy. The important thing is everyone should pay more attention to the issue and take a little bit patient to try to live in a eco ways to help the environment.

Reference:

Joyce, T 2010, ‘Permaculture in Java, Indonesia’, Jalan Prawirotaman IV No. 127B, Yogyakarta Organic market, <http://www.gonomad.com/5408-indonesia-thriving-permaculture-in-yogya> .

2014, ‘Green and Thrifty, with Notes of Fruit’, Hong Kong Chinese University,<http://www.iso.cuhk.edu.hk/english/publications/sustainable-campus/article.aspx?articleid=58626&gt;.