A plant that gives you salt and sugar. A forest “supermarket without the bills.” And a business model that treats farmers, foragers, and fishers like artists with a world stage, not beneficiaries waiting for help. We’re live at the 2026 Grounded Festival in the Otways with Helianti Hilman, founder of Javara, following her mission to help revive Indonesia’s rich food culture and turn food biodiversity into dignified livelihoods.

We talk terroir across an archipelago of landscapes and 1,300 ethnic groups, and what traditional knowledge still holds: slow cooking methods that protect nutrition, hyper-local souring agents and herbs, and delicious ingredients that serve many different functions. Helianti shares vivid examples, from lower-sodium salt in Papua to spice diversity that challenges what “normal” flavors even mean, plus the practical reality of mapping edible ecosystems without damaging them.

Then we get into the reeds in conversation: commercialisation without extraction. Helianti explains why rarity matters more than volume, how Javara develops processing methods that don’t rely on electricity, and how ancient packaging with no plastic, the right narrative, and traceability help indigenous foods compete on quality instead of pity. We also unpack her “artist manager” approach, the Food Artisan School for rural women and youth, cooperative structures for shared infrastructure and financing, and what hotels chasing ESG standards actually need from local supply chains.

We close with questions on sustainability, access, and intellectual property, including the limits of protecting traditional knowledge through trademarks and geographical indication, and why “food is medicine” isn’t a trend but a daily practice embedded in spices, herbs, and low-glycemic palm sugars. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the work.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 22 April 2026.

Title image by Alan Benson.

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below. 

Nicole Masters, live in conversation at Grounded for episode 307.

Liz Carlisle on the living ancient roots of regeneration and its healing ground for episode 309 last week.

Music: 

Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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