July 17, 2026 • Administrator

Local Food Curriculum: When jagung bose and se’i sapi enter the classroom in Timor Tengah Selatan

Every Thursday, the atmosphere of class 6A at SD GMIT 01 Soe in Timor Tengah Selatan (TTS) District, East Nusa Tenggara, changes from an ordinary study room into a shared kitchen. Students are divided into groups — some pounding white maize in a mortar, others sorting vegetables or preparing beef to be grilled. That day they are learning to make three dishes typical of Timor: jagung bose (hulled maize), se’i sapi (smoked beef) and sambal luat. Everything is done with traditional tools such as the mortar (lesung), the winnowing tray (nyiru) and the wood-fired stove.

What they are doing is not merely an extracurricular activity, but an official subject called the Local Content (Mulok) “Local Food for Climate Resilience”. TTS is recorded as the first district in East Nusa Tenggara to have a curriculum of this kind, and it has now become an example of how formal education can be used to safeguard food knowledge that until now has been passed on almost solely through oral storytelling.

Why local food entered the curriculum

This idea was born of a fairly fundamental concern. Food production is one of the sectors most affected by climate change, both in terms of availability and access. One way to adapt is to make use of local food, because this type of food has long adapted to the local weather and climate conditions, making it more robust in emergency situations. Local food is also closer and easier to access — without long-distance delivery, so it is fresher and more nutritious — and helps drive the economy and strengthen community bonds.

The problem is that knowledge of local food has until now been passed down through oral tradition between generations, leaving it prone to being lost because it is not well documented. Younger generations are also becoming increasingly unfamiliar with the types of food around them and tend to regard imported food as more modern and prestigious.

To answer this problem, Landscape Alliance (the new operational name of CIFOR and ICRAF), through the Land4Lives action-research project supported by the Government of Canada, worked with the Education and Culture Office of TTS District to develop this curriculum from March 2024. Besides TTS, similar initiatives are also being developed in Bone District (South Sulawesi) for the primary and junior secondary levels, and in South Sumatra for the senior secondary/vocational level.

This initiative is in line with a number of national policies, including Law No. 23 of 2014 on Regional Government, Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture No. 79 of 2014 on Local Content, and Presidential Regulation No. 81 of 2024 on the Acceleration of Food Diversification Based on Local Resource Potential.

Four elements, from garden to dining table

The local food Mulok curriculum is built as a stand-alone subject, with complete teaching tools: subject objectives, learning outcomes, learning objectives, learning-outcome pathways, and teaching materials. The material is taught in phase C (grades 5–6 of primary school) and phase D (grades 7–9 of junior secondary school), once a week.

There are four learning elements taught at different levels of depth according to the school level: observation and exploration of local food, cultivation, food processing, and presentation. Students are first introduced to the various types of food plants and animals around their homes, along with their nutritional benefits, then learn to grow and care for food crops in an environmentally friendly way, followed by how to process and preserve food ingredients, and finally learn to present them attractively and nutritiously. At SMP Negeri 2 Soe, for example, students are directly involved in managing the school garden — from planting and tending to harvesting.

The process itself was arranged in seven stages from March 2024 up to the launch: strengthening shared understanding, identifying needs and context, developing the curriculum, developing teaching materials, piloting in demonstration schools, joint evaluation, and finally endorsement and implementation. A total of 39 people from the education office, supervisors, school principals, teachers and development partners were involved as the curriculum development team, endorsed through a Decree of the Head of the TTS Education and Culture Office.

Pilot results and launch

This curriculum was piloted in 20 primary schools and 10 junior secondary schools over several months before being officially adopted. Based on monitoring and evaluation in November–December 2024, a total of 839 primary school students and 802 junior secondary school students had received this material. Expert reviewers rated the primary school teaching materials at 77.5 per cent and the junior secondary school materials at 79 per cent — deemed fit to continue with a number of minor improvements.

At SMPN 1 Mollo Utara, a six-month pilot involved 446 students who were directly engaged from land preparation, planting and harvesting to processing into a variety of nutritious foods. The school principal, Rini Elita Liem, noted that children’s liking for local food increased after it was processed with new variations — for example, banana that was usually only boiled is now fried into crisps. The children also gradually moved away from less healthy foods such as instant noodles.

On 11 June 2025, this curriculum was officially launched by TTS Deputy Regent Johny Army Konay and came into effect across all 503 primary schools and 147 junior secondary schools in the district from the 2025/2026 academic year, backed by a regent’s regulation as its legal umbrella.

Impact felt all the way home

The most tangible change is in fact seen in the students’ homes. Selfince Ully, a parent at SD GMIT 01 Soe, recounted that her child now loves eating cassava, sweet potato, maize and banana from around the house — something that did not happen before this Mulok. Another parent, Janse Beukliu, felt the lesson has eroded children’s embarrassment about bringing packed meals made from local food; now they are actually proud to show them off in public. There is also an economic benefit: families now cook more often from their own garden produce rather than buying, saving on expenses.

Erwina Telnoni, a teacher at SD GMIT 01 Soe who is also on the curriculum development team, recalls the moment when grade 5 and 6 students processed jagung bose from raw ingredients to a dish served on their own plates. For her, what is taught to children from an early age will stay with them into adulthood and become valuable knowledge later in life.

According to Arizka Mufida, coordinator of local food Mulok development at Landscape Alliance, the bigger goal is to make local food a body of formal knowledge documented in schools, rather than merely a story passed down through the generations. The programme is showing encouraging results: of the more than 12,000 students who took part in the curriculum pilot across three partner provinces (East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and South Sumatra), student knowledge increased by 54.7 per cent, with more than 265 pioneering teachers involved in the development and piloting.

Of course, there are still challenges to be resolved — from scheduling the subject, to limited land and practice facilities at schools, to the fact that not all teachers have a relevant background. But what is happening in class 6A at SD GMIT 01 Soe points in a clear direction: local food, once almost dismissed as unsophisticated, has now become a source of pride for East Nusa Tenggara’s new generation.

The success of this model in TTS has also become one of the good examples underpinning a larger step. After seeing the positive results of the curriculum’s application in three pilot provinces, the National Food Agency is now partnering with Landscape Alliance to promote the replication of the Local Food Mulok to other regions in Indonesia — one avenue being the development of the Guide to Developing a Local Content Curriculum for B2SA Food Consumption Patterns and Local Food, which is adaptive so that it can be adjusted by other local governments to the context and needs of their own areas — with the TTS experience as one of its good-practice references.

Referensi

  1. Hasugian, Rita. “#PerempuanRawatBumi: Belajar Pangan Lokal dari Sekolah di Soe.” KatongNTT, 21 Agustus 2025. https://katongntt.com/perempuanrawatbumi-belajar-pangan-lokal-dari-sekolah-di-soe/
  2. Pati Herin, Fransiskus. “Timor Tengah Selatan Luncurkan Kurikulum Pangan Lokal Pertama di NTT.” Kompas, 11 Juni 2025. https://www.kompas.id/artikel/kurikulum-pangan-lokal-pertama-di-ntt
  3. Ekadinata, Andree; Mufida, Arizka; Fortuna, Balgies Devi; Nafsiyah, Nurhayatun; Anugerah, Pijar Riza. Taklimat Edisi Pangan dan Gizi #01 – Mulok “Pangan Lokal untuk Ketahanan Iklim” untuk siswa SD dan SMP di Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan, Nusa Tenggara Timur. Bogor: CIFOR-ICRAF Program Indonesia, 2025. https://lahanuntukkehidupan.id/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Taklimat-Pangan-dan-Gizi-01.pdf
  4. Ekadinata, Andree; Mufida, Arizka; Fortuna, Balgies Devi; Nafsiyah, Nurhayatun; Lusiana, Betha. “Pangan Lokal untuk Ketahanan Iklim: Membangun Kurikulum Muatan Lokal Untuk Generasi Masa Depan.” Materi presentasi Webinar Kurikulum Mulok Pola Konsumsi Pangan B2SA dan Pangan Lokal, 10 September 2025.
  5. “Mulok Pangan Lokal: Menyemai Gizi dan Ketahanan Iklim Generasi Muda.” Landscape Alliance (CIFOR-ICRAF), 2025.

Originally published in Indonesian as “Mulok Pangan Lokal: Ketika Jagung Bose dan Se’i Sapi Masuk Ruang Kelas di Timor Tengah Selatan” on lahanuntukkehidupan.id