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ROBERT INNESS
arm families on the Indonesian
F
island of Bali cultivate small
plots of land but invariably
also have two or three steers
for draught and meat and one
cow for breeding. When cat-
tle reach between 375 and 400 kilograms,
they are sold.
‘Cattle are like money in the bank and
less risky than crops,’ explains a group of
farmers now working with researchers
from the Udayana State University in
Denpasar, Bali. The only breed raised on
the island is called Banteng, also referred
to simply as Bali cattle. These are an en-
tirely different species from European and
African cattle, and are especially well
adapted to the hot, humid climate of
Indonesia. Two notable characteristics of
Banteng cattle are their ability to survive
on poor pasture land and their lean, tender
meat which makes them attractive to ex-
port markets such as Hong Kong and
Japan. (See Reports, October 1985, p. 9.)
The university research team, headed by
Dr I. Made Nitis, believes that the tradition-
al system of cattle rearing can be modified
to benefit subsistence farmers, as well as
the island’s economy and ecology. The
new idea they are counting on is called
Three Strata Forage-or TSF for short. It
is a system of feeding cattle from three
sources of vegetation that can be grown
by the farmers right on the farm.
According to a review of the progress
made to date, conducted by an indepen-
dent group of evaluators in early 1987,
there are good reasons to be optimistic.
“. .TSF is a good strategy to provide
more diversity of crops and forages which
will be available throughout the year,”
wr,ites Mr Inu G. Ismail, an Indonesian
agronomist and member of the evaluation
team. “It will directly support the govern-
ment policy to increase the population of
Bali cattle.”
Another evaluator, Filipino animal scien-
tist Dr Cecilio R. Arboleda, writes: “In its
three years of project implementation, the
Three-Strata Forage project has shown that
the income and profitability of small-
holder farmers. could be improved by
planting forage trees, shrubs and grasses
along with the traditional food crops and
livestock in their farming systems.”
Between 60 and 70 percent of Bali’s
lDRC Reports. ,“lY ,988
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1 GREEN FEED FOR
~BALI CATTLE
INDONESIA'S
THREE
STRATA
FORAGE
SYSTEM
population of 2.7 million live in rural
areas. Farm holdings are rarely larger than
2 hectares per family. It is common prac-
tice to plant corn, cassava, soybean, or a
combination of these.
Farmers don’t usually plow right to the
edge of their plot, but normally leave “live
fences” consisting of cactus and trees.
Some fields are left fallow each year and
these are often used to tether cattle which
feed on any available grass or other green
roughage. In the dry season, there is less
grass immediately available, so farmers
supplement the animals’ feed with tree
leaves and grasses collected from lowland
farms up to 10 kilometres away. Under this
traditional grazing and feeding system, Bali
cattle gain weight relatively slowly-from
100 to 200 grams a day. At that rate, it
takes them four to six years to reach mar-
ketable weight.
Bali’s human population is increasing
rapidly. At current growth rates, it will be
30 percent larger by the year 2000. There
will thus be pressure to reduce either the
stocking rates or the amount of land used
to feed cattle. In either case, an important
and stable source of income for Bali’s
poorest farmers will be threatened.
Between 1977 and 1984, IDRC funded
a research project to develop improved
methods for feeding cattle. It was led by
Dr Nitis of Udayana State University. His
research team showed that Bali cattle can
record weight gains of 400 to 500 grams
per day when their diets are supplement-
ed with crop by-products such as rice bran
and other concentrated forms of protein.
At this growth rate, Banteng cattle reach
marketable weight in two to three years
instead of four to six.
The system demonstrated by Dr Nifis
and his colleagues, however, was rather
demanding in terms of costs and labour.
In 1985, they therefore proposed the
Three Strata Forage system, a less expen-
sive alternative feeding method. TSF uses
cuttings of selected grasses, shrubs, and
trees-that is, protein-rich biomass from
three levels or “strata” of forage. The TSF
project has been funded by IDRC since
1985.
The project grew up around a group of
farmers in the Bukit Peninsula who were
willing to participate in a six-year study us-
ing I6 hectares of land that they leased to
-.,.
the project. The farmers were instrumen-
tal in designing the 64 plots that would be
used to compare the traditional cattle
forage methods with the TSF system, us-
ing 48 head of Bali cattle. Aside from
monitoring and analysis, it has been the
farmers who have set and enforced the
regulations needed to ensure experimen-
tally sound results.
Under the TSF system, the animals’ diet
changes systematically with the seasons.
During the wet season (December to
March) and early in the dry season, the cat-
tle feed on grasses and legumes. From early
to mid dry season, they eat mainly green
fodder cut from shrubs, and during the rest
of the dry season and early in the next
rainy season, they feed on tree leaves, sup-
plemented by fodder stored earlier. Fun-
damentally, TSF is a way to make green
roughage available to cattle all year round.
High-protein forage plants
A number of the recommended species
in the TSF system are leguminous, includ-
ing some of the shrubs and trees. Such
plants have the ability to fix nitrogen
which fertilizes the soil for the non-
leguminous species. An additional benefit
to the cattle is the high protein content of
the legume species.
The research team hypothesized that the
TSF cattle would record gains of 300 grams
per day. In fact, they gained only 230
grams a day during the 1986 wet season-
which is still better than the 200 grams a
day for the cattle tethered in the traditional
manner.
The origin of the cattle seems to have
been a factor. Some of the Bali cattle pur-
chased for the test originated from another
area of Bali and found the shrub Glhicidia,
11

one “ftbe experimental fodders, to be on-
palatable. Those Bali cattle that had been
born and raised in the immediate fesf area,
however, didn’t have any problem with it.
AS compensation for lower-than-
expected weight gains, farmers mere able
to stock more cattle under TSF. Addition-
ally, more feed was being stored for use
in the dry season--a period when animals
grazed the traditional way normally lose
weight.
Farmers preferred TSF’s stall feeding
method over the practice of tethering be-
cause it saved time and made it easier to
collect manure. They noted, though, that
the TSF cattle, having been deprived of the
handling associated with tethering, were
wilder. And, because the open stalls ex-
posed the animals to the natural elements,
the TSF cattle were also more orone to
disease.
The TSF svstem has been modified to
overcome these difficulties. Cattle are now
housed in roofed sheds and, to make them
more manageable, they are walked f”
wafer once a day.
The impact of the new techniques is just
beginning to be felt, in the view of the six-
member evaluation team. Not only have
farmers from 60 percent of farm associa-
tions in the region visited the test site, but
many of the plant species used in the proj-
AN IDEAL PLOT
“rider the Three Strata Forage system,
faners make changes to only about
one third of their land in order to in-
crease forage production.
An ideal TSPplot would be 50 by 50
metres, or a quarter hectare. The core
area of 40 by 40 metres is planted to
traditional cask orfood crops such as
peanuts, cassaua, corn, soybeans, and
erimeter of plot lined with trees and shrubs.
Trees:
Ficus
Lall!l!%
Hibiscus
i
Shrubs:
Gliricidia
LWCaena
Grasses:
Cenchrus (1)
Panicum (2)
Legumes:
Cr Graham (3)
Centrosema (4)
cv. verano (5)
w
ect have been disseminated through a near-
by nursery.
Farmers in and near the project area
have begun f” substitute the shrub
Gliricidia for cxfus, the traditional living
fence species. Tracts of sloping land that
have been steadily eroded by wind and
water have been targeted by farmers as
ideal sites for pure stands of the frees and
shrubs promoted in the project.
Among other things, the evaluators
recommend that the researchers make the
TSF system as flexible as possible by giv-
ing farmers a wider choice of fodder spe-
cies f” plant. Perhaps their most important
observation, though, is the need for the
research team f” strengthen its understand-
ing of the socioeconomic aspects of both
TSF and existing farming systems in Bali.
Photos: C. Devendra i lDRC
By doing so, they will improve the chances
of TSF being tried out by other Indonesian
farmers. As evaluator Brian Carson, a
Canadian soil scientist, observed: “The in-
depth documentation and study of physi-
cal and socioeconomic characteristics of
the farming systems of the project area
could provide a springboard for the expan-
sion of the technology f” similar
agroecosystems throughout Indonesia.“H
sorghum. The surrounding 5-metre-
wide strip is reservedfor three kinds of
cattle forage: grasses and legumes;
shrubs; and trees.
The TSF system is not meant to be
rigid. Rather, farmers can adapt the
shape of theplot and the combination
offorage species to their own circum-
stances.