Restoration of annual cropping in tsunami-affected areas of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province, Indonesia

• Assessment Institute for Agricultural Technology (Aceh), Indonesia
• Indonesian Soil Research Institute, Indonesia
• Indonesian Institute for Rice Research, Indonesia
• Assessment Institute for Agricultural Technology (North Sumatra), Indonesia

The earthquake and tsunami damage in western Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) Province on 26 December 2004 resulted in great loss of the farming population, destruction of agricultural and other infrastructure, deposition of marine sediments and inundation of saline water on formerly productive fields. In a number of locations changes to landforms and elevation resulted in major changes to drainage patterns.
Basic infrastructure and accessibility have improved in the western coast districts, which were the most severely affected. There has been shift from disaster recovery and emergency aid to the re-establishment of livelihoods. Current food aid to people displaced by the tsunami now needs to be replaced with locally produced food.
The main field crops affected by the tsunami in NAD were wet-season rice grown in rotation with cash crops such as peanuts, soybeans, maize and vegetables (palawija crops). This project is assisting the re-establishment of rural livelihoods based on annual cropping, to reduce the reliance on food aid in tsunami-affected areas of NAD and in particular extend existing agricultural RD&E to food-cropping areas of western coastal districts.

The specific objectives of the project are to:
strengthen and rebuild the technical capacity of extension services at provincial (NAD-BPTP), district (kabupaten) and subdistrict (kecamatan) levels to manage tsunami-affected soils and restore crop production;
develop and demonstrate soil management practices to restore the productivity of annual crops in tsunami-affected production areas;
develop and implement a communication strategy for information exchange between government, non-government and community interest groups working to restore agriculture to tsunami-affected land.

The project is using an on-farm participatory research strategy to identify soil constraints and evaluate technologies to improve crop production. Scientists aim to engage extension staff and farmers directly with research trials, to ensure rapid dissemination of findings. The training strategies include structured interactive workshops and on-the-job practice on project activities. Communication strategies include face-to-face information gathering, use and expansion of existing networks as well as distribution of published materials.
It was revealed during a March-April 2006 visit that onle two or three of the 100+ organisations currently working in NAD province are collaborating in any meaningful way with the BPTP NAD (the local agricultural research institution). The training and communication activities are aimed at increasing collaboration between the Indonesian partners and other organisations.
The current ACIAR project (LWR/2005/004) has provided salinity training and resources for BPTP NAD to conduct on-farm trials and monitoring on the east coast of Sumatera and on Nias. This project builds on the teams established in that project, to enable establishment of operations on the west coast of Sumatera and much greater involvement of district and sub-district extension staff on both the east and west coasts.