- Sri Atmiatun, a farmer in Indonesia’s Batutegi forest landscape, is among hundreds of community members participating in the country’s social forestry program, which grants legal access to state forest land while requiring sustainable management.
- The program has expanded farmers’ access to training, support and diversified agroforestry systems, contributing to reduced forest clearing and greater conservation awareness, although challenges related to markets, institutions and farming practices remain.
- Batutegi’s experience reflects both the opportunities and limitations of social forestry, as communities, government agencies and conservation groups work to improve livelihoods while preventing further forest loss.
- The changes are also creating new roles for rural women, whose growing involvement in farming enterprises and community organizations is reshaping local economies and decision-making.
TANGGAMUS, Indonesia — When Sri Atmiatun arrived in the hills of the Batutegi region in southern Sumatra’s Lampung province in 2017, the coffee trees were already there, overgrown and neglected, slowly fading back into scrub. Her uncle had asked her to take over the plot. Sri agreed, trading years of labor on oil palm plantations in the central Sumatran province of Riau.
Nearly a decade later, she still walks the same uphill path each morning.
Now 45, Sri manages more than 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of land within the 1,400-hectare (3,460-acre) Sumber Makmur social forestry area. Sumber Makmur itself sits on the edge of the more than 80,000-hectare (198,000-acre) Batutegi forest landscape, where some areas are strictly protected while others are managed by communities through agroforestry systems.
Under the social forestry program, the land remains state-owned, but local communities like Sri’s are granted the right to manage it for their livelihoods under rules designed to protect the forest and its ecological functions.
“I stayed because this land feeds us,” Sri told Mongabay in early March. “If I leave, who will take care of it?”
Sri’s story reflects a broader shift. Across the Batutegi landscape, land that was once cleared for coffee is now being restored and managed under Indonesia’s social forestry program. Legal recognition has given farmers access to support and training from the government and private organizations. In return, forest clearing and expansion into protected core areas have been reduced, allowing the forest to remain a safe habitat for native wildlife and rescued animals.
But conservationists and farmers alike acknowledge that progress remains fragile, as long-term success depends on whether communities can maintain stable livelihoods, local institutions can be strengthened, and the pressure to expand deeper into the forest can be resisted.
Reshaping the forest
Although Batutegi was designated a protected forest long before Indonesia became an independent nation in 1945, large waves of encroachment continued up until the early 2000s as farmers rapidly expanded coffee cultivation, often fueled by lax regulation and few economic alternatives. The government later introduced community forestry permits in Batutegi between 2007 and 2010 to formalize long-standing cultivation inside the forest and reduce further illegal clearing.
However, the transition didn’t immediately produce strong conservation outcomes. Clearing intensified again around 2013 and 2017, partly because of the way the social forestry scheme was implemented in the early stages. Only people with land in the area were eligible to join farmers’ groups, known as Gapoktan, creating an incentive for communities to reopen long-abandoned land that had naturally regenerated so it could be registered as cultivation plots under the program.
What remains today is no longer a continuous primary forest. Much of Batutegi’s roughly 58,000 hectares (143,000 acres) has been converted or cultivated, with studies showing that most of the area is now used by local communities under various management schemes, leaving forest cover fragmented and interspersed with smallholder farms.
Rommy Qurniati, a forestry lecturer at University of Lampung, said the main contribution of social forestry in Batutegi and across Lampung province was providing legal recognition for communities that have long managed forest land informally, giving them greater security and access to government and private sector assistance, partnerships, mentoring and institutional support previously unavailable to groups considered illegal.
However, she said the benefits remain uneven, as many farmers’ groups with permits still face problems, ranging from weak institutional capacity to poor land management practices.
Since 2017, organizations including nonprofit conservation group YIARI have worked with communities to curb further expansion into protected forest areas by strengthening agroforestry systems, farmer institutions and conservation awareness.
Their mentoring programs, which expanded further from 2020 onward, increasingly emphasize improving productivity on existing farmland rather than clearing new plots, while encouraging multicrop agroforestry systems designed to restore tree cover and reduce dependence on coffee monocultures.
Sri is one of hundreds of farmers working under Indonesia’s community forest scheme in Batutegi. Across the area, the support programs now reach 16 farmers’ groups organized under four cooperatives, including Sumber Makmur, where Sri is a member.
The support goes beyond basic farming advice. Farmers take part in field schools, group discussions and hands-on training. They also receive support for livestock and nurseries. The goal is to build systems that combine crops, trees and animals on the same land.
Sri’s farm shows how that shift is taking shape. While coffee still dominates, it no longer stands alone. Candlenut trees rise above the shrubs, while nutmeg, avocado and areca palms grow in between them. The farmers say this mix of crops helps spread risk and creates different sources of income across the year.
Livestock farming added another layer when it was introduced in 2024 in some farmers’ groups. Goat populations have since grown sharply, with some nearly doubling. Farmers are now selling animals while still building their herds, creating a cycle where income and assets grow together. The animals also support integrated farming. For instance, Sri is currently testing out goat manure as fertilizer, in the hope that costs will go down while productivity improves.
“I’ve really learned many new farming lessons,” she said.
Her daily routine is largely fixed. In the mornings, Sri tends to her coffee and candlenut trees. By afternoon she’s cutting grass for her goats. She spends the evenings processing crops under solar-powered light.
Older farmers here say there was seldom this kind of certainty in the past. Working the land inside a forest area meant constant risk. Crops could be destroyed, houses and farming tents could be torn down, and approaching patrols were enough to send illegal farmers running.
That changed in 2017 when the government introduced formal access through the social forestry program. When Sri’s farmers’ group first banded together, many doubted the social forestry scheme would last. Now, her thriving coffee trees and grazing goats suggest otherwise.
“We realized the land belongs to the state,” said Dayat, who leads the Sumber Makmur farmers’ group. “The harvest is ours, but the land is not.”
While that shift brought a new kind of stability, it also came with rules. Farmers are expected to protect the forest, keep tree cover intact, and follow sustainable practices. As a result, land conflicts have since declined. With legal access and clearer benefits, farmers appear to be more willing to protect what they depend on.
Sri said she feels that responsibility every day. She avoids expanding her plot into protected areas, and uses fewer agrochemicals. Shade trees are now part of how she farms. Her land no longer looks like a simple coffee plot. It resembles a layered garden with coffee grown beneath taller trees, while other crops fill the gaps.
Some plants, like bananas and areca nuts, can be harvested often and provide steady cash, while others take longer but bring higher returns when they do, Sri said.
Her farm also sits at the edge of a forest where wildlife still moves through, like slow lorises (Nycticebus coucang), sambar deer (Rusa unicolor), wild boars (Sus scrofa) and occasionally even Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae). Many farmers used to complain that foraging wildlife sometimes damaged crops, but attitudes are changing.
“We try to make sure they can eat and we can eat,” Dayat said, adding that farmers are learning to see the forest as something to live with, not push back against.
A 2021 study on community social forestry, which included Batutegi among its sites, found that farmers with community forestry permits said the program helped reduce forest fires and air pollution by establishing clear land boundaries and collective rules that discouraged slash-and-burn clearing. Members also actively monitored and warned against the use of fire to clear forested land.
By mid-morning, Sri has already cleared weeds and checked her crops, part of a routine that rarely pauses. When it’s bright and sunny, she dries areca nuts behind her house before traders arrive to collect them.
But what she earns depends on market conditions she can’t influence.
Like many farmers in the area, Sri still relies on middlemen to sell her produce, leaving her with little say over prices. Recently, she began recording harvests and sales in a notebook after attending bookkeeping training, a small shift toward treating her farm as a business.
Efforts to improve market access include the creation of farmers’ business groups, according to Aji Mandala Putra of YIARI, the nonprofit that has supported the farmers’ groups in Batutegi since their formalization. The business groups are meant to strengthen bargaining power and reduce dependence on traders, Aji said.
The results have been mixed, with some groups struggling to function well, he said. When that happens, farmers often return to middlemen, he added. Such concerns could push farmers back toward old habits as in the past, with short-term pressure sometimes leading to unsustainable practices such as clearing more land, Aji said.
“Rebuilding trust may take more effort, especially if many people would have thought the initiative as unsuccessful,” he said.
However, Aji said their intervention in Batutegi has been holistic, including training, institutional support, and improved farming methods, all to eventually increase coffee quality and yields without encroaching on the protected forest’s core area.
As livelihoods shift, dependence on the Batutegi forest remains a constant. Sri’s persistence mirrors that of women in a nearby group called Bumi Tani Sejahtera (BTS), formed in 2024. Like Sri, many of its 10 members had long worked as unpaid helpers on family farms, and organizing changed that.
The group’s first project, raising local chickens, was intended to improve nutrition, but failed due to disease and rising feed costs. Instead of giving up, the group reinvested its savings into catfish ponds and a small banana chip business. Both now generate modest but steady income.
For some members, joining the group meant leaving the house regularly for the first time beyond farm labor. They now meet weekly, manage finances, and negotiate with buyers.
“Before, women only helped during harvest,” said Nurul, the leader of the BTS group. “Now we have our own activities.”
The experiences of Sri and the BTS group reflect a broader transformation. Across these farmers’ groups in the Batutegi landscape, farming is shifting from subsistence toward diversification by combining crops, livestock and small enterprises to stabilize income. It’s also shaped by the same forces of limited land, uncertain markets, and the gradual building of trust in collective action.
The system is still fragile, so cooperation between farmers, government agencies and conservation groups remains essential, Dayat said, noting that the land is still state-owned, and the long-term success of social forestry depends on farmers proving they can manage it sustainably.
“The hope is that government and private organizations can help accelerate the process so communities do not have to repeat too many mistakes,” Rommy, the forestry lecturer, told Mongabay, adding that Batutegi could learn from experiences in other areas.
She noted that Batutegi differs from more successful social forestry areas in Lampung, such as Pesawaran and Gunung Balak, because some farmers here still live far from the land they cultivate. As a result, many rely on inherited or imitated farming practices without fully understanding soil health, fertilizer use or sustainable land management.
By contrast, successful agroforestry systems elsewhere in Lampung developed through long processes of experimentation, stronger facilitation, closer community ties to the forest, and more flexible support from local forest management authorities.
“The challenge now is finding the right tree combinations that can coexist with coffee while also supporting both economic and conservation goals,” Rommy said.
Karmele Llano Sanchez, YIARI’s founder and chief executive officer, said she hopes the level of intervention might not need to be as intensive in the future, as the farmers in Batutegi would have to become truly independent and prosperous with these practices being part of their habits.
She said the groups pointed to a quiet transformation of a rural economy where farmers are becoming entrepreneurs, forests are becoming shared responsibilities, and women are stepping into decision-making roles in their own right.
“So, this is really an investment in the future,” Sanchez said. “The goal is to move forward to a point where, one day, this system can sustain itself without our presence.”
Basten Gokkon is a senior staff writer for Indonesia at Mongabay. Find him on 𝕏, @bgokkon.
See related story:
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Cite this article
Basten Gokkon (2026). In Sumatra, social forestry links conservation with livelihoods. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320463Credits
