Project background
Sumba island, in eastern Indonesia, is an amazing tourist destination. It lies far off the beaten track, with rich unique culture, world-class surf breaks, and one of the best-rated hotels in the world.
But it also has extremely high rates of poverty and stunting. Stunting is one of the most extreme indicators of malnutrition, resulting from long-term nutritional deprivation. Poverty and stunting in Sumba are driven and exacerbated by low agricultural productivity that is further impacted by an eight-month dry season.
The poverty rate for Laboya Barat sub-district is 63%. A further 20% of the population are ‘near-poor’ and extremely vulnerable to shocks.
This poverty and vulnerability to economic and environmental shocks causes a negative cycle where poor farmers are less able, and less willing, to invest much of their limited funds into their agriculture activities, as they consider it too risky.
Low productivity means there are less food crops available for consumption, which contributes to poor diet, poor health and malnutrition. At the same time, less cash crops are available for sale, contributing to low income, which also reduces economic access to food.
Although the communities rely heavily on agriculture, their farming is highly dependent on rainfall. Unfortunately the dry season lasts at least 8 months, and with climate change, rainfall patterns have become very unpredictable.
This project has helped communities to start breaking these vicious cycles.
Project activities and results
The $20,013 raised by the Footprints Network for this project was used to:
- Provide training on good agriculture practice;
- Develop and produce materials in local language;
- Set up a new drip irrigation system; and
- Provide coaching by SurfAid’s horticultural specialist.
SurfAid always adapts our projects to local contexts, so it was important to first identify the communities’ existing avenues to access food and earn money. Agriculture is the main source of food and income for the remote target communities in Sumba, where approximately 90% of the population are farmers. Within this context, improved agriculture production can help to improve nutrition by providing access to diverse, nutritious crops, and also by improving purchasing power so that families can buy nutritious food.
This project introduced new agriculture technologies and techniques to local farmers through training sessions at the SurfAid-established demonstration farm. Demonstration farms provide crucial opportunities for farmers to test new methods against traditional methods, removing a major barrier to trying things on their own farms first. This is an important component of the project, since poor farmers living in remote locations are extremely risk averse. They are often skeptical about the effectiveness of new practices, and are reluctant to adopt them. From their perspective, with their limited resources, if they try a new approach and the crops fail, they are left with nothing. This demonstration farm increased farmers’ participation by reducing the perceived risk.
Through this project, SurfAid used this new demonstration farm to provide 4 structured workshops for farmers, on new agriculture technologies and techniques, allowing them to try them for themselves, and providing them with ongoing support to answer questions that arise. 19 training sessions in each of the local villages provided local farmers with important information on improving land preparation and using organic fertiliser. Positive uptake of this training has flowed on to farmers inviting SurfAid to provide further coaching at their own farms, reaching a total of 277 farmers across the communities of Sumba. These farmers are now increasingly able to implement the good agriculture practice techniques that they have learned from this project.
This project contributed to the establishment of a new drip irrigation system in the remote areas, to increase access to water, as well as increasing the efficiency of water use, and improving crop yields. This irrigation system has been implemented at the demonstration farm, to give farmers and village leaders the opportunity to see it used in practice, before they consider applying it themselves. The first harvests of the demonstration farms have been so successful that the local communities have said they intend to implement similar systems using their own funds.
This will help to ensure year-round access to water for irrigation of currently-unusable arid land, making an important change for these communities that still experience an 8-month ‘hungry season’ each year.
The success of this project is also showing farmers that vegetables may be easier to grow, and more profitable, than they traditionally believed.
Project partners and community involvement
This project was delivered using SurfAid’s ‘accompaniment’ approach to development: SurfAid staff lived and worked alongside community members for the duration of the project. This ensured the community’s training and learning needs were continuously addressed through direct coaching and mentorship. It also meant that the community members were active stakeholders and participants in this project.
SurfAid specifically worked with farmers groups, women’s community groups and local kaders (‘community health volunteers’), to deliver this project.
We used our proven approach of working together with the local government to ensure enough extension staff are available, adequately trained, and with sufficient budget to travel as required to ensure sustainability. Local government extension workers were involved in the good agriculture practice training sessions, which increased government capacity and ownership of the project’s outcomes, and also increases the chances of sustainability.
Part of a larger strategy
SurfAid works in remote islands in Indonesia, where access to basic services is very low, contributing to high maternal and child mortality, and low mother and child health status. Indonesia is one of ten countries with the highest number of under-five deaths
This project is part of SurfAid’s overarching six-year program called NusaTani (meaning ‘Farming Islands’ in Bahasa Indonesia). The NusaTani program focuses on increasing income and decreasing malnutrition for 19,202 people in Laboya Barat, Sumba and Parado, Sumbawa in Indonesia. Both areas have extremely high rates of poverty and stunting. To combat this, SurfAid is implementing activities to strengthen agricultural production, stimulate income generation, promote healthcare practices and gender equity.
SurfAid uses a Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture approach (NSA) which aims to address underlying determinants of malnutrition by focusing on agriculture and behavior change.
This project is one of many smaller projects that all contribute to supporting food security and resilience for remote Indonesian communities.
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Project background
Sumba island in Indonesia is an amazing tourist destination. It hosts one of the best hotels in the world and has fantastic waves for surfing.
But it also has extremely high rates of poverty and stunting. Stunting is one of the most extreme indicators of malnutrition, resulting from long-term nutritional deprivation. Poverty and stunting in Sumba are driven and exacerbated by low agricultural productivity that is further impacted by an eight-month dry season.
The poverty rate for the for Laboya Barat sub-district is 63%. A further 20% of the population are ‘near-poor’ and extremely vulnerable to shocks.
This poverty and vulnerability to economic and environmental shocks causes a negative cycle where poor farmers are less able, and less willing, to invest in agriculture activities, as they think it is risky.
Low productivity means there is less food crops available for consumption, which contributes to poor diet, poor health and malnutrition. At the same time, less cash crops are available for sale, contributing to low income, which also reduces economic access to food.

Project overview
Agriculture is the main source of food and income in the program area, where approximately 90% of the population are farmers.
Rainfall-dependent agriculture is the backbone of the communities. Unfortunately, the dry season lasts at least 8 months, and rain fall patterns have become very unpredictable.
This Footprints project will ensure year-round access to water for irrigation of currently unusable dry land. A solar powered irrigation system will increase access to farmable land for communities that still experience a ‘hungry season’ each year.
SurfAid will implement this small-scale solar energy powered irrigation system in a demonstration farm. will serve as training grounds for communities where new technologies and techniques such as inter cropping, multi cropping, and good agricultural practices will be introduced. This will to help increase their yield and provide access to nutritious crops.
Many farmers think vegetables are difficult to grow, and don’t believe they are profitable. Combined with the current lack of farmable land and lack of year-round access to water, it means that there is very low physical availability of vegetables. The demonstration farm will help to show that growing vegetables is both good for nutrition, and profitable.
Additional focus will be on parenting techniques that include nutrition, female empowerment and a woman’s impact on family income, individual caring capacity and female energy expenditure.

Project cost
The $20,000 raised by the Footprints Network will go towards the following activities:
- Set up of a solar powered irrigation system: $11,700
- 3 training sessions for 4 farmer groups at the demonstration farm on intercropping with other existing cash crops (eg. corn), improved farm management practices and the use of organic and environmentally-friendly fertiliser and pesticides: $6,000
- Learning materials produced in local languages: $800
- Coaching in the community’s farms and field by SurfAid horticultural specialist: $1,500
Project partners and community involvement
SurfAid practices an accompaniment approach to development which consists of SurfAid staff living and working alongside community members for the duration of the project. This ensures the training needs are continuously addressed through direct coaching and mentorship. It also means that the community members are active stakeholders and participants in this project.
SurfAid will work specifically with farmer groups, women groups and the community health volunteers (kader).
Following SurfAid’s previous health programmes’ successes in advocating for health outreach services and availability of midwives, we will use the same approach in working together with the local government to ensure enough extension staff are available, adequately trained, and with sufficient budget to travel as required to ensure sustainability.

Part of a larger strategy
SurfAid works in remote islands in Indonesia, where access to basic services is very low, contributing to high maternal and child mortality, and low mother and child health status. Indonesia is one of ten countries with the highest number of under-five deaths
This project is part of an overarching program called NusaTani (farming islands in Indonesian). The Nusatani project will focus on increasing income and decreasing malnutrition for 19,202 people in Laboya Barat, Sumba and Parado, Sumbawa in Indonesia. Both areas have extremely high rates of poverty and stunting. To combat this, SurfAid will implement activities to strengthen agricultural production, stimulate income generation, promote healthcare practices, and gender equity.
SurfAid uses a Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture approach (NSA) which aims to address underlying determinants of malnutrition by focusing on agriculture and behavior change.
This projects is one of the many smaller projects that all contribute to supporting the communities to become more food sufficient.