LEMBATA ISLAND, Indonesia — A horde of children from Tapobali village rush out of Wulandoni 4 Junior High School to the sorghum field clasping blades and gathering starchy panicles into woven baskets.

“We sell some of the harvest, and the rest is ingredients for baking,” Yudi Fridolin Atawolo, who teaches English at the school, told Mongabay Indonesia. “The proceeds are used to purchase school supplies and distributed to students.”

Harvest time at this eastern Indonesia school project is a milestone for Ambrosia Ero and Hendrikus Bua Kilok. Three years ago, the pair helped establish Gerep Blamu Tapobali Wolowutun (Gebetan), a civil society organization of young people in Tapobali bringing practical solutions to safeguard food security in the village.

“Ambrosia and I are trying to form a community,” Hendrikus, who is in his late 20s, told Mongabay Indonesia. “The focus is on local food-based agriculture and spring conservation as a way to protect and sustain our own village.”

Tapobali is home to just 367 residents living across 553 hectares (1,366 acres) in three hamlets — Ina Tua Wato, Lelawiti and Walet — on the southern coast of Lembata Island in East Nusa Tenggara province.

Access to Lewoleba, the nearest town and district seat, is expensive and inconvenient over uneven roads.

“Transportation is often a barrier for people getting to Lewoleba,” elected village head Agutinus Bala Ledun told Mongabay Indonesia. “Not to mention the very limited cell phone reception.”

Along the road to Tapobali, villages can endure droughts of up to nine months, with even hotter and drier weather estimated in the future, according to climate change models.

Many in Tapobali recall hunger induced by corn and rice crop failures in 2003 and 2014. Last year, farmers in several villages across Lembata Island reported corn harvests down by more than half owing to drought intensified by the El Niño climate pattern, which prolongs the main dry season in Indonesia.

Hotter temperatures and extreme rainfall are bringing increased incidences of plant disease and outbreaks of pests, according to Koalisi Pangan Baik (Good Food Coalition), a local nonprofit.

Over recent years, farmers here have been speaking of shifting seasons and dehydrated wells, which they blame for erratic corn harvests falling below expectations. Once planted, corn can typically be harvested just once.

For Ambrosia, the prospect of increasingly punishing heat in a region already among the most vulnerable in the world’s fourth most-populous country required community action.

“She wants to work for society and take the initiative without paying attention to how much money it earns,” Hendrikus said.

Grassroots action

Sorghum is a flowering grass that can grow over six feet tall, offering panicles of starchy, nutrient-dense grains.

A centuries-old crop in India and China, and a staple across much of Africa today, Ambrosia and Hendrikus considered sorghum, also known as millet, a good candidate for Lembata’s marginal, often desiccated soils.

Gebetan began work in Tapobali planting seedlings of bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris) and pea trees (Samanea saman) to help reinforce the water table.

Later, Ambrosia and Hendrikus met with Yaspensel, a local civil society organization that works to help communities adapt to future change.

“We were given guidance and training on climate change issues,” Ambrosia said.

Yaspensel recommended surveying local knowledge of beans and grains. Gebetan recorded beans and tubers planted in many gardens, but limited experience with sorghum, despite its apparent advantages.

However, some farmers told Ambrosia stories of past generations foraging a black variety of wild sorghum, known as kfarfolot.

“This local food existed in our ancestors’ lives,” Ambrosia said. “But it wasn’t cultivated.”

Volunteers prepared the ground by conducting further outreach, communicating the benefits of sorghum — the world’s fifth-most farmed cereal crop — as a way of adapting to climate change.

Students at the Wulandoni 4 Junior High School learned to bake cakes using sorghum, which can be consumed as whole grain or processed into syrup or flour.

Before long, farmers’ fields that previously grew corn and rice were covered in flowering sorghum. And last year, the young volunteers began planting sorghum on an empty patch of land behind the junior high school.

“Many people come to us asking for seeds to plant in their gardens,” Ambrosia said.

Gebetan has since received 83 million rupiah ($5,000) in funding from the Samdhana Institute, a prominent Southeast Asian civil society organization established in 2003, to support the small businesses selling cakes made by the middle school and roasted coffee blended with sorghum.

‘Healthier to consume’

The grassroots work carried out by Gebetan takes place as Indonesia wrestles with its historically top-down approach to food policy.

Sago and root crops were once staples across much of Indonesia, until Suharto’s New Order government pushed white rice in the 1970s via subsidized fertilizers and cheap seeds through a supply chain dominated by the family circle.

Half a century later, public health authorities say this dependence on refined rice is supporting a silent diabetes epidemic, perhaps leaving millions at risk of severe complications and early death.

Ambrosia and Hendrikus said sorghum, with its low glycemic index, offers diverse benefits to farmers and consumers alike in Tapobali.

“The local food is healthier to consume. Sorghum, legumes, tubers, rice and corn can adapt to dry and barren soils and climate change. Sorghum, even with low rainfall, continues to grow and produce fruit,” they said.

In 2024, Indonesia’s government signed Regulation Number 81 to push this diversification of food commodities in rural areas, which requires state agencies to support locally appropriate crops like cassava and sorghum.

“Sorghum can be harvested up to three times after it’s planted,” said Andriko Noto Susanto, deputy lead for food security at the National Food Agency. “This is clearly more efficient than corn, which can only be harvested once per planting cycle.”

The National Food Agency has proposed that sago and sorghum be included in the government’s food reserve scheme (Cadangan Pangan Pemerintah, or CPP), which currently stockpiles only rice.

Analysts say previous attempts to diversify Indonesia’s food policy failed to supplant the dominance of refined rice.

Food security

A decade ago, the Indonesian National Atomic Energy Agency (BATAN in Indonesian) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) introduced two modified variants of sorghum. One of the two mutant variants, Samurai 2, can yield up to 8.5 tons per hectare (3.4 tons per acre) — up to a third more than existing varieties.

“Our first sorghum crop failed due to prolonged heat,” Ambrosia said, adding that the yield was only 10 kilograms (22 pounds) from nearly a hectare (2.5 acres) of land.

Initially, Gebetan counted around 40 young people as members, but cost of living pressures saw many migrate out of the village to study or work. Now, the group has seven members left.

But last year, Tapobali farmers recorded two bumper harvests, with plenty left over as seed to replant fields with in the community. The early success has sparked interest beyond Tapobali,

“We’re grateful that now it’s not just our residents,” Ambrosia said. “Neighboring villages are also starting to plant sorghum.”

Hendrikus stressed that many in Tapobali already associate the shifting seasons, erratic weather and ungiving soils with the process of climate change.

“If our generation has already felt it, then of course the next generation will feel it, too,” Hendrikus said.

Banner image: The cheerful faces of Wulandoni 4 Public Middle School students after harvesting sorghum in the school garden in Tapobali village. Image by Nopri Ismi/Mongabay Indonesia.

This story was first published here and here in Indonesian on Aug. 24 and 25, 2025.

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