Ciwaluh is Heading for Organic Certification

Even though the life style and farming system of Ciwaluh community is done naturally and in harmony with the nature, it is still not an easy thing to get international acknowledgment as a community with organic way of living and producing.

Preparation for getting the acknowledgement from International certification institution is started in may. It started with a meeting with the community to explain the advantage of getting organic acknowledgment from international certification institution. As we have known, the world people awareness is increasing, especially in health matters. They incline to changing to environment friendly and sustainable products.

The organic acknowledgment automatically will make it easier for marketing of various products that Ciwaluh produces.

Among the well known products that Ciwaluh community produced is kidney tea (Orthosiphon stamineus), cardamom, coffee (Coffea sp.) and paddy. Kidney tea production is no less than 12 tons/year, cardamom 5 tons/year, coffee 15 tons/year, and rice about 25 tons/year. With a population of only 80 families or about 400 people the economic condition of Ciwaluh should have been more prosperous. But this is not the case because Ciwaluh can only sell their products very cheaply right now.

One of the requirements to obtain organic certification is the presence of community institution that manages economic activity. In March, 2008 through a series of community meetings, they established a cooperative. While they are still in the process of getting legal documents for the cooperative, this cooperative has been serving Kidney Tea collection and trade, both as raw materieal and in dried form. The cooperative has also educate the people about post-production processing to get the best quality, which is dry but the colour is still green, the stick content is low and water content low.

In the future, the cooperative will serve other products too like organic Kapulaga, coffee, and rice. This cooperative is part of the wider organization, the Koperasi Tanaman obat dan rempah-rempah Jawa Barat, in partnership with PT Poros Nusantara Utama.

In May 2008 they have conducted laboratorium check on the soil samples and kidney tea products from Ciwaluh. The laboratorium check is to ensure that the products are really organic. The laboratorium check shows that there is no pesticide at all in their products and in their soil. Therefore the products also are free from dangerous metal content like Timbal, Cadnium and Mercury.

To support post-harvest activity, the Ciwaluh Cooperative has built a drying room and storage facility. The drying room is used to fasten the drying process of kidney tea leaves, Kapulaga, and coffee. This facility will be very usefull especially during the rainy season, December, January and February.

The storehouse is very usefull to store the product that has been bought from cooperative, before it is stored by the Central cooperative. With proper storehouse, the product quality will be kept from damage. Usually, after it is collected in certain volume, kidney tea will be sent to central cooperative storehouse at Cigombang, 10 kilometres from Ciwaluh.

We all hope that the process of organic certification will run smoothly and it will increase the economic prosperity of Ciwaluh community.


West Java Medical Plant Cooperative to gather with Telapak works in Ciwaluh Village is supported by HPSP (Holticultura Partnership Support Programme) dan Japan Enveronmental Education Forum (JEFF)