Impressive accomplishment by our Sumatra team to transplant 300,000 seedlings in Corona times.

Earlier posts have talked about how our Sumatra team is developing innovative ways to continue working on ecosystem restoration without major delays. At the beginning of Corona last year, a large village nursery had already been established to grow coffee seedlings, leuceana leucocephala (lamtoro in Indonesian), various timber trees and cinnamon seedlings. To ensure the safety of our team, we also established Corona regulations for them. Similar to the EU and elsewhere, we asked them to restrict their mobility to necessary trips (mainly between the field sites and their homes). Restrictions caused by Corona has made them to invent innovative approaches to get things done.

1 Ask cinnamon tree farmers to bring/sell seedlings from their own land.

The limitation in mobility would have caused constraints in getting the 135,000 cinnamon seedlings. They planned to go around and buy from small scale nurseries, but because of Corona travelling around was difficult. Instead, knowing the region very well, they decided to call various village heads from nearby villages where they knew many farmers had planted cinnamon trees. Knowing that the seeds of the cinnamon trees are many, usually dispersed by birds, the team asked farmers to collect the germinating cinnamon seedlings from their own gardens. Some requirements were given, like at least 15 cm in height and having 5 leaves, and roots of about 10 cm. These could then be brought to the village nursery in our restoration site. The people would be paid for every seedling that would match the requirements. This turned out to be highly successful. Within 5 weeks all 135,000 seedlings were delivered by many farmers, usually on motorcycles, put in polybags and being taken care of in the village nursery. Amazing solution. We have learned that this could be a good approach for future cinnamon seedling needs as well.

2 Develop decentralised nurseries to reduce farmer movements to collect seedlings

Our field team judged that it might not be a good idea to have almost 200 farmers visit the large village nursery to collect their seedlings, once they are ready for planting out in the field. So smaller, decentralised nurseries were set up close to blocks of land, where one farmer group would manage a part of the entire ecosystem restoration site. In total 5 different nurseries were established for this purpose.

3 immense complex logistic operation to distribute seedlings during this rainy season

Since the rainy season started last November 2020, seedling distribution of cinnamon trees in particular had started. Together with the village head a coordinated effort was established to ensure all seedlings are distributed before mid-April 2021 (end of rainy season and also the start of the fasting month, Ramadhan). Time slots had to be made for all farmers to collect their cinnamon seedlings and coffee seedlings in the central nursery. The village corona regulations as well stipulated that large gatherings were forbidden (e.g. many farmers collecting the seedlings at the same time). First of all, time slots were made for all to collect their needed cinnamon seedlings and lamtoro seedlings from the village nursery. To ensure that all would receive their required seedlings, trucks were also hired to do home deliveries for those who had no transport, or would otherwise have to join others in a car or on a motorcycle (which was not favoured by the village corona regulations). In addition, large amounts were also delivered by the trucks to the decentralised nurseries where farmers could collect the seedling by themselves (usually on a motorcycle). The other tree species could be collected here as well, as they were raised in these smaller nursery units. But with each ha needed to be planted with around 2000 seedlings, each famer had to ride the motorcycle several times to collect all. In practice this would also mean giving farmers more than one time slot to collect all their seedlings. And with a number of rainy days where transport (especially riding a motorbike) would be impossible because of flooded areas or very muddy and slippery conditions, collection schedules had to be adjusted all the time. We can only imagine the enormous tasks our team fulfilled to get it all done in time, while keeping tree records and deliveries up to date for each farmer (also a requirement for planvivo certification).
4 Now the final part: coffee seedlings in March.
Cinnamon, lamtoro and timber trees have all been distributed and planted. At the moment, coffee seedlings remain but are being distributed now, as the final stage. They aim to finish end of March with everything,

A very big thank you to our team and farmer groups to make this all happen under Corona times. We are immensely grateful to work with them.