Spinach or football?

Yuna picks water spinach to sell at the local market in Tanjung Priok, in the North of the Indonesian capital Jakarta. She farms land that is leased from a private company.

It lies next to Kampung Bayam, a green space owned by the local government and cultivated by locals. The name Kampung Bayam means “Spinach Village” – inspired by the leafy vegetable that grows here.

The Kampung Bayam community was evicted when building started on the Jakarta International Stadium. With space to host 82,000 visitors to football games or cultural events, the modern white stadium opened to the public in 2022. The evicted families, however, are still waiting for the new flats they were promised - despite their protests.

“Farmers in Jakarta face mounting uncertainty about the future”

Although she was not directly affected by the eviction like the farmers of Kampung Bayam, Yuna worries that one day the owner of the land might want her to leave the plot.

Yuna and other farmers working near the stadium are temporary residents and they live near the land they work on. Since Jakarta’s green spaces are very limited, farmers in Jakarta sew their seeds on rented land and face mounting uncertainty about the future.

Climate change, deforestation and environmental pollution greatly affects the lives of farmers in Indonesia. Meanwhile the fast-growing economy and urbanisation means that infrastructure development often takes priority over rice fields.

Farmers are also threatened by land grabbing as their plots increase in value. These threats make traditional farming precarious – in Jakarta and elsewhere in the country.