- Smallholder farmers in Indonesia face increasing difficulties due to disruptions in global fertiliser supply chains and unreliable government subsidies.
- Pandawa Agri Indonesia has developed Balance Solution, a microbial-friendly soil ameliorant designed to complement or partially replace conventional fertilisers, giving farmers more flexibility during supply shortages.
- The product works by improving the soil environment for native beneficial microorganisms, enabling better nutrient uptake without the need to introduce new microbial strains.
With disruptions in the global fertiliser supply chain, Indonesia’s smallholder farmers are under intensified pressure.
These farmers have long relied heavily on subsidised fertilisers, but subsidy programmes struggled to keep pace with the challenges, said Pandawa Agri CEO Kukuh Roxa.
“This is mainly about smallholders,” he told AgTechNavigator.
“In Indonesia, many farmers are highly dependent on fertiliser subsidies, and when they cannot access those subsidies, they struggle to manage their fertiliser use. That is why we want to make these products available to farmers, especially rice and coffee farmers, because subsidies often arrive late. Farmers need fertiliser at specific stages, but it does not always come when they need it.”
Balance Solution, the company’s new product, is positioned as a complementary input that could improve uptake and maintain or increase yields, even when fertiliser access is delayed or limited.
By improving nutrient efficiency rather than relying on additional inputs, the company aims to give farmers more flexibility when fertiliser supply chains become unreliable.
Optimising soil for microbial life
Pandawa Agri is an Indonesian life sciences company known for its pesticide reductants.
The soil ameliorant is a relatively new offering that it has been field testing with crops such as coffee, rice, and palm oil.
The soil ameliorant functions as a growing medium for beneficial microorganisms already living in the soil.
Roxa explained that while agricultural soils contain large microbial populations, many remain inactive because soil conditions are unfavourable.
Nutrients may be present, microbes may exist, and crops may be capable of uptake, but without the right environment, these elements do not interact effectively, he said.
To address this, the product creates a physical and biological “home” that allows microbes to thrive.
Once the activity resumes, plant are able to take up nutrients that were previously locked in the soil.
Roxa emphasised that the product does not add any microbial strains, adding that new strains could fail to establish themselves in existing soil ecosystems.
By focusing on improving the habitat for native microbes, the product can also be used more widely.
Promising results
In coffee trials, farmers reduced NPK application by about 30 per cent, replacing that portion with Balance Solution.
Despite lower fertiliser use, yields increased by an estimated 30 to 40 per cent, according to the company.
In rice systems are fertiliser rates are already relatively low but yield risks are higher, said Roxa.
In rice trials, farmers have reduced fertiliser use by 10 per cent and seen around 10 per cent improvement in productivity.
Encouraged by those outcomes, Company P has since expanded trials beyond coffee and rice.
In oil palm, its partners are currently assessing yield improvements without fertiliser reduction in order to safeguard production.
Forestry nurseries represent another avenue. In this segment, the product can partially replace conventional nursery media by 10 to 50 per cent.
According to the company, users have reported greener leaves, stronger branches and cost savings of around 20 per cent.
Roxa said the company would continue to run trials to determine how much fertiliser can be reduced safely without harming production and farmer incomes.
In coffee, where results are now consistent, the company is scaling in Lampung and South Sumatra.
These coffee trials are expanding from pilot plots of roughly 20 hectares to around 600 hectares.
Rice trials are also being expanded to about 100 hectares this year, alongside ongoing palm oil and forestry tests, including outside Indonesia.
