The prospects & challenges of local foods production in rural Java, Indonesia: The case of kulonprogo regency

The importance of home gardens as the traditional source of local foods has been abandoned due to the new lifestyle of the young generation in Indonesia. The paper aims at examining the prospects and challenges of promoting local food as a complement to rice as staple food and to improve food security simultaneously. The paper is written on the basis of reviews of reports and focused group discussions with relevant stakeholders as well as reports from research on local food inventory and rural spatial transformation. The paper reveals that local food production in the regency have been neglected for five decades and only recently regained a new momentum for development. The promotion of local foods for improving food security are constrained by unconductive national policy (importing rice rather than promoting local foods), regional-structural factors (uncontrolled land conversions) and operational factors (ignorance of new generation on local foods). © 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.