Darsih found herself searching for information and companies and farmers who were involved with organic farming in Indonesia.  This was because her husband, who had been to Aceh for training in organic farming methods, had commenced farming in Bali and needed contacts and information.

This led her to build the web site http://www.indonesiaorganic.com that could bring together all the information she could find, and make it available.

So this talk was largely about the web-site, and  Darsih had slides that you can view - this file is 1.87 MB so give it a couple of minutes to download. You will find that the web-site is a mine of information and is well worth browsing.

She touched on many topics - Growers markets, she helped establish the market in Ubud, and hopes there will soon be one in Lovina  

She talked about "organic" as not being just about food, but is about keeping soil alive and healthy and keeping water sources unpolluted.  She talked of mulching and composting as being key techniques is maintaining healthy soils, and about permaculture which she described as "what you take out of the soil, you then put back".  

One of the challenges for an organic farmer in Bali is to get the land - there is almost no virgin land available, so you need  a process to transition land that has been used for non-organic farming, to be sutibale for organic.

Darsih has the statistics to show that her work in establishing the web-site is paying off with increasing numbers of visits.  So now they need to concentrate more on building up the content.

Members had some interesting questions and comments.