The Jakarta Post, Features - October 30, 2007
Warief Djajanto Basorie, Contributor, Batam

Rusmin, 36, quickly counted off all the positives. “It grows well. The growth time is much faster. And it tastes sweet.”

Standing between his modest house made of thin triplex board normally used for home ceilings, and his 1,000 square meter spread behind him, the dark-skinned wiry farmer explained how his crops fared after using compost.

Rusmin and four other farmers on Batam island are part of a trial project in the use of the compost, organic fertilizer made from land waste.

Batam is known as a growing free trade zone with 25 industrial parks on the island, the largest being Batamindo Park at more than 400 hectares. It wants to become a manufacturing and service hub to eventually rival its more sophisticated northern neighbor.

Batam, an island city in the Riau islands group, is only a 40-minute ferry trip from Singapore to the north.

The island, however, is less known for its pockets of farmland, such as in Sei Temiang in north-central Batam.

The Batam Authority that manages the unused level field opened it for organic test farming, assigning parcels to Rusmin and his fellow farmers to develop three fast-growing garden vegetables — timun (cucumber), sawi (mustard greens) and kacang panjang (string beans). String beans take two months to mature, cucumber 40 days and mustard greens only 27 days. (more…)