Corn Farming to Recover Barren Land

The DML team recently visited the Central Borneo, we meet the chief of the local Dayak (indigenous people) and the District Administrator (or known as the Bupati). They are facing a challenge to recover the barren land abandoned by the former logging companies.

On the other hand my colleagues have worked with local farmers in Central Java who have been successfully develop corn as cash crops from a local seed breeding. It gives approx. 10 tons per hectare dried corns. They are willing to share the corn seeds to the Dayaks in Borneo, of course we will pay them. And in Borneo we have the local government as the buyer, budgeted to provide food (they can spend it easily by buying corn or rice in the market), but they want to use it to develop their barren land into a corn farm. Sound easy, right? Get the local bank to bridge the working capital, wait for three months and will get paid from the corn harvest paid by the local budget. But in Indonesia, no such banks is willing to put a “risk” without any physical collateral or back-to-back asset guarantee.

People are eager to farm corn, not only does  it give a good market price, but also provide local people’s staple food that can be stored over the year.
We need a partner-investor to work with us. Since we get support from both local authority and local indigenous tribe, we are in a very good position on the ground. But we don’t have working capital to start our venture. If there is somebody or any company interested to be an socio-eco entrepreneur this is a chance to start the business. We need minimum USD 70,000 with net return USD 100,000 in three months.