As the number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia increase, our daily life has changed dramatically. Many of us doing our jobs from home; our children going to online learning, guided by their teacher as most of school closed for minimum 2 weeks; and it is recommended to avoid crowded places like mall or mass gathering event as government imposed strict restriction.
Although I do not have sufficient knowledge to predict the lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic, it seems that this situation will be considered normal for the next few months. One thing is certain, life will continue and we must be able to adjust our life to deal with this situation.
Thats what we do now. Life goes on at our banana farm. We planted banana seeds in the remaining land that had not yet been planted.
Planting seeds is done manually, by involving local people. We still use seedlings from banana tillers and only a few using tissue-cultured banana seedlings.
As we made this farm as a small local empowerment effort, we prefer to use seedlings from neighbourhood, including hired local people to clearing up the land, preparing planting holes, planting banana seed and finally, managing and maintaining farm later.
All of these activities are indeed not very efficient from the business perspective, but I am happy to have small contribution for local empowerment, especially to deal with economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia.
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