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Wrapper curing near completion.
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Mechanized seeding programs.
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Mechanization of pre-curing sewing process.
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Wrapper tobacco large-scale seedling sites.
Sustainable tobacco production (STP), as well as community and social responsibility (CSR) are quintessential aspects of Universal Leaf’s operations in Indonesia.
PT. Tempu Rejo is a fully-owned affiliate of Universal Leaf Tobacco and headquartered in Indonesia’s prime tobacco region surrounding the municipality of Jember on the eastern tip of Java. The firm has engaged in various sustainable growth initiatives at least since 2011. Evolving as time passed, “many of the sustainable farming activities have in fact been put in place even long before the first community and social responsibility programs were eventually formalized,” said Tempu Rejo’s managing director, Richard Wood. Randy Nijkamp, the company’s vice president for growing operations, added that the approach and scope both had consistently improved, particularly since 2016. “One could say that our engagement, for example in the area of contract farming, has matured to a true integration, where not just the crop but also the farming community and environment are included,” he told Tobacco Asia.
According to Wood, sustainability measures initially focused on reducing the usage of agro-chemicals in order to create a supply of tobaccos with acceptable residues. “This also was done to ensure that the crop protection agents being used would align with industry trends and customer expectations, as well as lower the potential environmental impact,” he said. Another focus of attention at that time were second-tier risks, which included minimizing the presence of NTRMs, performing regular soil chemical analysis, as well as conducting irrigation and drinking water quality checks. Contract farming was introduced as “a means to build a reliable relationship with our farmers and to ensure they implement and maintain good agricultural practices,” according to Wood
Laying out policy and goals
Universal Leaf’s corporate headquarters plays a very important role in the larger scope of things, laying out policy and sustainability goals for all subsidiary companies, wherever they may be located. “There is no compromise in ensuring that we make every effort to achieve continual improvement,” asserted Wood. But Universal’s customers likewise are involved in that bigger picture. “Their respective needs and priorities have a significant impact on how we operate,” said Wood. “It is our local knowledge that ultimately enables us at Tempu Rejo to prioritize our actions and customize our programs to meet those needs.”
“True and mature integration,” in the words of Randy Nijkamp, of course also includes the supervision of farmers by dedicated sustainability programs and agronomy teams, whereas the overall approach is based on the four pillars of governance, crop, environment, and people. “Each of these pillars is guided by risk assessments that allow for prioritization of certain measures, such as training, provision, initiation of pilot programs, and many more,” Nijkamp explained.
“As a corporation, our actions indeed can have a huge effect on the livelihoods of all stakeholders, be they farmers, employees, local communities, or our customers,” said Richard Wood. In his opinion, a company that does not look out for its stakeholders will in the long term fail to make positive steps forward, which in the end may lead to a lack of sustainability. “We need to respect this and move towards the common good. Hence, Universal Leaf espouses a culture where our actions benefit everyone in the supply chain,” he elaborated. “Sustainability and good corporate citizenship are very closely related.”
CSR: Substantially more than simple welfare
Meanwhile, Randy Nijkamp interpreted CSR as the “support for anything that is not necessarily directly related to tobacco farming communities alone.” CSR programs, he said, “provide goods, materials, and financial support for those in need, and [such programs] mostly come ad-hoc.” This could, for instance, encompass the response to a flood emergency, such as the urgent installment of freshwater towers for affected communities or providing assistance in rebuilding damaged infrastructure.
There are other initiatives that – at least at first glance – appear to be not much more than simply a nod towards goodwill and family welfare. Yet they are indirectly helping achieve certain sustainability-related CSR goals. “Take the children’s playgrounds that we set up in farming communities, for example,” pointed out Randy Nijkamp. “Tempu Rejo has strict policies against the use of child labor and exposing children to agricultural hazards. It has always been our concern that mothers working in the fields or curing barns may bring along their young children. Playgrounds are a great way for keeping children out of the fields.” Nijkamp added that this risk is highest during harvest seasons because labor needs are at their peak and mothers may feel compelled to bring their young children to work instead of staying home to care for them. Additionally, the centrally-located playgrounds are ideal venues for staging education or community events for adult villagers.
“Self-sustaining” programs
While initiatives such as providing playgrounds mainly serve altruistic reasons, Tempu Rejo (like any other tobacco producer) is of course foremost a commercial operation whose continued existence relies on providing returns to its investors. Many of the initiatives therefore include elements intended to make them self-sustaining. A good example for this is the company’s introduction of micro businesses like “Sewing & Needlework”, which foster a modest cottage industry, foster female empowerment, and generate family income during the tobacco off-season. Once established, these programs are designed to be run by the communities themselves.
Then there is the “Waste Bank” program. According to Nijkamp, “It is based on the circular economy concept that looks beyond the ‘take, use, and discard’ approach and redefines ‘waste’ as a valuable resource,” for example, by turning organic material into compost or wood scraps into charcoal that can either be sold or used by the farmer families. “We are not a charity but a sustainable organization that strives to devise CSR projects that carry them-selves, leaving a lasting positive impact in the communities,” he said.
Whenever the company devises new initiatives, thought is always given to an eventual ‘handover timeline’,” as Richard Wood called it. “For example, once our recent sewing machine initiative has taken off and is up and running, it will be handed over to the community so they can continue with it under their own responsibility,” he said.
Going beyond the mandatory
Voluntary initiatives are one thing, but Tempu Rejo’s programs include mandatory elements that are in line with or exceed Indonesian law, including compliance with requirements prohibiting child labor and other labor violations and certain aspects concerning environmental protection, among others. “Simply restricting ourselves to complying with minimum legal standards would not solve all the underlying issues,” pointed out Nijkamp. “We are going far beyond that with training, educating, and empowering our contracted farmers and their families.”
Apart from launching income-generating cottage industry projects, Tempu Rejo also organizes and conducts training courses about farm and environmental safety, good agricultural practices, water conservation, and labor and financial management, just to name a few. “We are sharing these skills because a financially secure, well-trained farmer is a lot more likely to continue a successful, sustainable business than an untrained, uninformed one,” assured Nijkamp.
STP and CSR naturally are ongoing efforts, where there are always opportunities for improvement. “Our focus for the next three years is to bring our current programs to an increasingly larger farmer base,” Nijkamp explained. The company’s proactive commercial relationship with its contracted farmers will also help the latter improve their livelihoods and income. Contracted farmers sell their tobacco directly to Tempu Rejo, which reduces the farmers’ costs by eliminating their reliance on selling produce through commission-driven middlemen. “That is reason enough for us that we need our programs to succeed,” Nijkamp asserted.
Monitoring project success
Even with the best intentions and plans, projects still must be monitored for success. Nijkamp recounted the case of a tobacco irrigation project as part of Tempu Rejo’s farm mechanization drive. “The drip irrigation that we had set up proved very inefficient due to the farm landscape, which is inherently rice paddy-oriented,” he said. “Tobacco is only planted during one of the three annual crop seasons, while the other two are dedicated to rice.”
That particular situation necessitated the removal of the drip lines after each and every tobacco harvest. “Such frequent dismantling and reinstalling caused unsustainably high repair and maintenance costs,” Wood divulged. The company identified the challenges and adopted an action plan to address them. A semi-permanent overhead irrigation system may potentially provide a solution and is currently undergoing testing.