Font Size: 

Next to oxygen, food is a basic need for living beings to survive. To feed the world's growing population, experts develop agricultural technology that relies on chemical inputs, patent seeds, mechanization, and irrigation. It marks the shift from traditional to modern agriculture, distinguished by their attitude toward nature. Traditional agriculture seeks to live with nature complementary, while modern agriculture attempts to control nature exploitatively. Modern agriculture succeeds in producing food massively and quickly, but it also results in other consequences, including food issues, farmers’ lack of independence, and environmental degradation. In response to the concerns, some Christian farmers have shifted their agricultural model from chemical-based to organic agriculture. The study aims to find reasons why farmers turn their agricultural model and reflect on religion's role in the overturn. Studies that bring together agriculture, environment, and religion do not yet attract scholars from agriculture, religion and social sciences, making literature on this topic scarce. The research uses a qualitative approach and a constructivism-interpretivism paradigm. The data is generated through depth-interview with ten Christian rice organic farmers affiliated with the Sekretariat Pelayanan Tani dan Nelayan Hari Pangan Sedunia/SPTN-HPS (The Secretariat of Farmers and Fishermen Services-World Food Day). The farmers are from Yogyakarta Special Region and East Nusa Tenggara Province. The concept to analyze the data is lived religion, developed by Nancy T Ammerman.  The study finds that religion inspires farmers through a sense of interconnectedness with other creatures, a life purposiveness of every being, moral values (justice, honesty, courage), rituals, and religion's embodiment particularly in health and emotions. When religion animates agriculture, it transforms environment from thing to being.  That kind of agriculture is known as religious agrarianism, which is right according to the Scripture.

agriculture, lived religion, Christianity, worldview, Indonesia