Australian Embassy
Indonesia

Making Key Ingredients More Affordable and Increasing Farmers’ Incomes

Media Release

23 June 2017

As families are sitting down to break their fast all over Indonesia, one of the things they won’t have to worry about is that shallots will be too expensive to include in their grandmother’s rendang recipe.

This is because out in Lombok, at the foot of Mount Rinjani, Australia’s Promoting Rural Income through Support for Markets in Agriculture (PRISMA) program is working with smallholder farmers and an Indonesian company called EWINDO to increase their shallot yield, just in time for high demand over Idul Fitri.

Indonesians eat an average of 1.09 million MT per year of shallots, which is the main ingredient in almost every Indonesian dish including the famous rendang. PRISMA has partnered with EWINDO in East Java and NTB to introduce higher quality shallot seeds to farmers to increase their yields. Together we have helped to increase farmer’s shallot production by 24%, which amounts to an income increase of 74% for 2,729 farmers.

In addition to shallots, PRISMA also works across a range of other commodities essential to Indonesia’s food consumption, including vegetables, coconut, chilli and soybeans. The program has already increased the incomes of more than 45,000 farmer households by an average of 139%.

The Australian Embassy in Jakarta wishes everyone a Happy Eid Mubarak 1438H.

About PRISMA

Promoting Rural Income through Support for Markets in Agriculture (PRISMA) is a five-year program supported by the Indonesian and Australian governments. PRISMA aims to contribute to a 30% increase in the net incomes of 300,000 smallholder farmer by 2018. The program works in a range of agricultural commodities across five provinces in Eastern Indonesia, including East Java, NTB, NTT, Papua and West Papua. The program partners with the private sector to improve access to markets and agricultural inputs for poor farmers. To date, PRISMA is working with 76 private sector companies in 20 agricultural commodities.