“That’s what friends are for.”

A simple sentence, yet full of meaning in many contexts.

As vegetable seed producers, our best friends, the farmers, are spread across Indonesia. Despite the wide distribution of our products and dispatched field teams, a leader shall only be satisfied after personally seeing the farmers successfully optimize our products for their prosperity.

A team consisting of key leaders,  Glenn Pardede (Managing Director) and Afrizal Gindow (Sales Director), also from our foundation, Yayasan Bina Tani Sejahtera (YBTS), visited Sorong on 23-25 May 2023. During the three days trip, they visited over 40 farmers who cultivated a wide range of crops. The commodities ranged from simple ones, such as spinach and kangkong, to more complex ones, like pepper and tomato. On this visit, Glenn wanted to ensure that the surrounding farmers could maximize the utility of our products, Cap Panah Merah seeds. Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) is one of the critical paths farmers should take to enhance their economic livelihood,

Adek helped Om Frans in applying plastic mulch and seedlings. As he helped Om Frans, he detected a missing GAP know-how on Om Frans. To help Om Frans, Adek borrowed some valuable equipment from transmigrant farmers in the surrounding area. Despite the cultural differences, this area’s transmigrant and local farmers lived in harmony and always generously shared knowledge. Adek also taught Om Frans to later invest in this practical equipment once he got the farming profit after the planting season. After three weeks, Om Frans’s plants had shown good progress.

Imagine the amount of time Om Frans would have wasted from the manual labor work had he never crossed paths with Adek.

Through Yayasan Bina Tani Sejahtera (YBTS), PT East West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO) consistently shared knowledge with the farmers, especially those in Eastern Indonesia. Om Frans pioneered modern horticulture farming in Mariat District, Sorong Regency, Southwest Papua. In the meantime, we continuously worked on transferring knowledge about GAP and market access to support farmers in adding value to their fresh produce.

As a part of EWINDO, we always imagine how we want to resonate this song’s lyrics to our farmers, “You know you can count on me for sure. That’s what friends are for….” 

Writer: East West Seed Indonesia