A Tale of Resilience: Meri Lodu the Farmer
Meri Lodu or who is often called Bu Meri is a tough woman who comes from Salulemo, North Luwu. For over 10 years, Mrs. Meri has been the head of the family and has been supporting her own family and her extended family members including her older brother, sister and two nephews. Two of her older siblings couldn't help because they are incapacitated and are not able to fend for themselves.
Circumstances led her to migrate to Kalimantan for about 4 years where she worked as a laborer in one of the oil palm plantations but had to finally return to her hometown due to illness. Mrs. Meri once suffered from appendicitis before finally being operated on with the costs of the operation borne by her family. As the backbone of the family, Mrs. Meri has engaged in various kinds of jobs to survive. Starting from being a manual laborer at the market to driving motorcycle taxis to selling sago leaves to patchouli gardening to corn gardening. From a young age until now, Mrs. Meri has always been a hard-working woman. From sunrise to sunset, Mrs. Meri spent her time working, and it is not uncommon for Mrs. Meri to come back home late at night.
The highest income she ever received was IDR 100,000 – IDR 120,000 less than 10 USD in one day which had to be shared for her household expenses, from food to gasoline and payments on her motorcycle loans repayment. Of course this made things very hard for Mrs. Meri especially considering that she is also responsible for the needs of her brother and nephew. Therefore, Mrs. Meri cultivates several fields of corn in the morning before starting the job of looking for sago leaves and then to motorcycle taxis.
Managing corn land is not as easy as people think. It takes a fairly large capital of more than 50 times her maximum daily income as well as the assiduous task involved with corn farming. Besides struggling with the needed capital needed for purchase of inputs, she also has to deal with finding the labor to work on her corn fields. She pulls through the cash crunch by borrowing from local traders which often come with very high interest rates and sometimes limiting conditions. In fact, it is not uncommon for Mrs. Meri to suffer losses during her harvesting period because the results obtained are not able to cover all the expenses that must be paid by Mrs. Meri.
Having lived in this situation year in year out, she finally learnt about Indotani. Mrs. Meri felt significant changes starting from the funding to the agronomy and harvest support she received. Unlike traders who only lended money to farmers, Indotani provides agronomy advice and support to farmers to increase farmers' crop yields. Starting from the process of ordering production inputs, support and follow-ups during planting process, follow-ups on plant conditions and technical assistance and support during harvest process and finally to the payments of proceeds from the harvest, everything becomes easier.
Mrs. Meri no longer finds it difficult to obtain production facilities for planting as before. Indotani makes it easy for Mrs. Meri to meet all her farming needs. Apart from that, Mrs. Meri also feels that Indotani is a savior for all the needs that she has to fulfill. Mrs. Meri is one of the many farmers who have been beneficiaries of the Indotani platform. Mrs. Meri is very grateful for Indotani and she hopes that all farmers can experience the benefits that Indotani can provide.
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