Rediscovering Indonesia’s local food heritage

Arizka Mufida
Research Delivery Team Coordinator
CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia

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In East Nusa Tenggara, there is a food preparation made from pumpkin or wax gourd, mixed with salt and then roasted. It is called Bok Tunu (Bok, from Boko, meaning pumpkin, and Tunu, meaning roasted). Information about this local dish is hard to find on search engines such as Google, yet it is documented on WikiPangan.id.

Bok Tunu is just one of many local food preparations that remain unknown to most people, because information about them is more often passed on through oral tradition, handed down from one generation to the next. The weakness of this oral method is that information is frequently not well documented, leaving it prone to being lost and forgotten.

The WikiPangan community is one of the first communities in Indonesia to document the wealth of local food in a participatory way. Newly formed across three provinces — East Nusa Tenggara, South Sumatra and South Sulawesi — the community works together on a voluntary basis to gather a range of knowledge about local food and share it with everyone.

The documentation process is carried out through discussion and by writing articles on the WikiPangan.id platform, a digital encyclopaedia containing a wide range of knowledge about local food, including types of food ingredients, their preparations, culture, photographs, recipes and methods, and nutritional information.

WikiPangan’s documentation efforts are intended not only to preserve cultural knowledge, but also to build climate resilience. The initiative was launched by CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia through the Land4Lives action-research project, with support from Global Affairs Canada, which aims to strengthen the climate resilience of vulnerable communities, particularly women and girls.

One of the ways to respond to climate change is through adaptation. When a climate disaster strikes, one of the functions disrupted is the food supply. To cope with such situations, one of the measures that can be taken is to build food security, particularly around local food. Local food can be a solution because it has already adapted to the local weather and climate conditions, making it more climate-resilient; it is easier to access and therefore fresher, thanks to shorter delivery distances; and it tends to be cheaper and more diverse.

Jetriyanus Nino, a food practitioner from East Nusa Tenggara and a member of the Local Food Research team at the Mentari Menerangi Indonesia Foundation, affirmed: “The presence of WikiPangan is like finding a long-awaited meeting space. WikiPangan opens the way for anyone to share and learn about the wealth of local food. A great deal of knowledge and good practice that until now has lived only by word of mouth now has a place to be written down, shared and preserved, so that it becomes a legacy for future generations. The spirit of mutual cooperation in filling WikiPangan is like tending to vital roots: food sovereignty, cultural identity and climate resilience.” Through participatory information gathering, in less than a year the WikiPangan community’s 170 contributors have successfully compiled more than 200 pieces of knowledge about local food across the three provinces. Interestingly, some of the information on food ingredients and preparations documented by WikiPangan is difficult to find through internet search engines.

Even so, the number of articles is still lower than the findings of research conducted by CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia in 2023 across 36 villages in three provinces. That research recorded 155 types of food ingredients consumed in Timor Tengah Selatan District, East Nusa Tenggara; 158 types in Bone District, South Sulawesi; 186 types in Banyuasin District; and 189 types in Musi Banyuasin District, South Sumatra. These data come from just 36 villages, so one can imagine how rich Indonesia’s local food potential truly is.

Besides gathering information participatively in the form of articles, the WikiPangan community also runs campaigns to introduce local food through social media and offline events. The community works with several universities and carries out a range of creative activities targeting the wider public. Some examples include Bincang Pangan (Food Talks), Jappa-Jappa ri Pasara, Sambang Raso, Akademi Pangan (Food Academy) and various competitions.

Through this platform and these various activities, it is hoped that knowledge about local food will be well preserved, so that it can be known, used and sustained by younger generations in support of the food-security pillars of availability and utilisation.

Balgies Devi Fortuna contributed to the writing of this article.

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Originally published in Indonesian as “Menggali kekayaan pangan lokal Indonesia” on kiprahagroforestri.id