About Trubus

Trubus

Trubus was an Indonesian monthly agriculture magazine, published in Indonesian by PT Trubus Swadaya. It was first published in December 1969 and appeared in print for 55 years, until its final print issue in December 2024; from 2025 the Trubus brand has continued only through its online portal, trubus.id. Founded under the social foundation Yayasan Sosial Tani Membangun and later associated with Bina Swadaya, one of Indonesia's largest non-governmental organisations, Trubus provided practical articles on farming, horticulture and agribusiness. Its editor-in-chief in its later print years was Sardi Duryatmo, its ISSN was 0126-0057, and although reference entries list it with Jakarta, its company base in its later years was Depok, West Java. Few Indonesian specialist magazines have matched its longevity.

Founding in December 1969

Trubus was first published in December 1969 by the Yayasan Sosial Tani Membangun, the Social Foundation of Farmers Building, which was then two years old. The foundation had been established by the Pancasila Farmers Association, the IPP, which was formed in 1958; the IPP was later fused into HKTI, the government-sanctioned farmers' union, and the foundation became independent. Wikipedia's entry names Bambang Ismawan as the magazine's founder. The title itself is an Indonesian word for a young shoot sprouting from a plant — an apt name for a magazine intended to help Indonesian agriculture grow. The magazine's first decades coincided with the Green Revolution period, when Indonesian government policy placed agriculture at the centre of national development.

Early struggles and survival

The magazine had a hard time financially in the 1970s and 1980s and had difficulty recruiting writers and contributors. For years it was kept going with funds from a West German institution, but in 1980 that funding stopped. The late P. K. Ojong, a respected journalist and one of the founders of the Kompas daily, advised that it be closed down, saying that this kind of magazine was not destined to live for a long time. Its patrons refused to give up. Instead they set up a book publishing house that sold agricultural books by mail order; it became very successful, and its profits were used to support Trubus. That book business remained an enduring part of the Trubus enterprise, and the episode became central to the magazine's own story of itself: a specialist title that survived by building a business around its readers' needs.

Bina Swadaya and the Trubus family of activities

In 1984 the foundation formed Bina Swadaya to manage its wide-ranging activities. Bina Swadaya grew into one of the largest non-governmental organisations in Indonesia, known among NGOs especially for its Usaha Bersama self-help programme. Its activities came to include agribusiness — including six Trubus shops in Jakarta selling agricultural products mainly to hobbyists — poverty alleviation, publishing houses, a social forestry programme, an income-generating programme, alternative tourism in the form of agrotourism and ecotourism, and development research and consultation. Among the urban public, however, Trubus magazine was the most popular of all its endeavours, the public face of an organisation otherwise known mainly in development circles. The magazine was published by PT Trubus Swadaya within this structure.

From farmers' reference to city farmers

The magazine's deputy chief editor F. Rahardi, a poet from Ambarawa in Central Java who effectively ran the monthly in its middle decades, wanted Trubus to function as a farmers' reference. When that readership could not support the magazine on its own, the focus switched to what he called city farmers: urban readers who farmed and gardened seriously as a business or a passion. By its 25th anniversary reporting in The Jakarta Post, Trubus's readers were described as middle- to upper-class urban dwellers who willingly paid for a magazine valued as useful, applicable and durable. Its subscribers were diverse, including the celebrated badminton player Rudy Hartono, military figures and public personalities — readers drawn by content that ranged from plantation management to home gardening.

What Trubus published

Trubus provided information on agricultural technologies, the control of pests and plant diseases, agricultural business analysis, and introduced new, potentially profitable agricultural products. A typical issue in its mature years might report on exclusive vegetables such as sage, borage and rhubarb, with a detachable supplement listing dozens more; introduce an exotic flower such as protea from Hawaii; catalogue aquarium fish; explain how to ripen bananas correctly; or warn readers about imitation products in the food market. The Trubus organisation describes the magazine as a trendsetter: commodities that appeared on its cover and as its main topics went on to become national trends, among them red fruit (buah merah), virgin coconut oil, aglaonema ornamental plants, euphorbia, louhan fish, betta fish, sengon and jabon timber trees. By 2023 the magazine had published 661 editions.

Training, courses and books

Trubus extended beyond the printed page. From around 1998, as Indonesians turned to agribusiness during the economic crisis, the magazine held agribusiness-related courses alongside its book publishing. Its programmes included a three-day course on cultivating vegetables such as paprika, tomatoes and pak choy using hydroponic technology in Cimande, Bogor; a two-day course on growing vegetables in low-altitude areas in Karawang, West Java; and a two-day course on cultivating chilli during the rainy season in Bogor. The hydroponics course taught market prospects as well as technique: designing a hydroponic network, mixing fertilisers correctly, identifying pests and preventing them. Its deputy chief editor Pinus Lingga observed at the time that ever more people wished to enter agribusiness, especially short-cycle crops such as chilli and vegetables. Trubus thus functioned as a school for new agricultural entrepreneurs as well as a magazine.

Final print years and the move online

Trubus remained a monthly print magazine, published in full colour, into its sixth decade. Its last print issue appeared in December 2024, closing a print run that had begun in December 1969 — 55 years earlier. From 2025 the brand existed only in its online portal, trubus.id, which continues to publish agricultural content in Indonesian. Reference summaries therefore describe Trubus in the past tense as a print magazine — monthly from 1969 to 2024, online from 2025 — while the name and its archive live on digitally. For Indonesian print media, where many specialist titles closed far earlier in the digital transition, reaching a 55th year in print was itself a notable achievement.

Style and scholarly attention

The magazine's language attracted academic study in its own right. Indonesian researchers examined the personification of figurative words in Trubus as a subject in modern stylistics, noting the magazine's role in providing information on cultivation and marketing in agribusiness and its function in improving the quality and quantity of Indonesia's agribusiness sector. That scholarly interest reflects the magazine's distinctive voice: practical agricultural instruction written in vivid, accessible Indonesian, intended to motivate readers to farm better. A magazine that began as a farmers' bulletin became, in the researchers' framing, a text worth studying for how its language works on its audience.

A record of Indonesian agricultural change

Across its 55 print years Trubus chronicled the transformation of Indonesian farming itself: the Green Revolution decades in which agriculture was the key sector of national development plans; the growth of commercial horticulture and ornamental-plant markets; the agribusiness boom that followed the 1997-98 economic crisis, when farming was among the most resistant sectors of the economy; and the later rise of hydroponics, urban farming and online agricultural information. Its pages introduced urban Indonesians to commodities and techniques — from red fruit and virgin coconut oil to land-based grouper cultivation reported in its final years — and its account of its own trendsetting lists edition after edition, reaching 661 editions by May 2023. Because it served hobbyists, small entrepreneurs and plantation managers at once, the magazine connected parts of Indonesian agriculture that rarely shared a readership, and its long archive remains a source for how the country's farming culture presented itself to its own public.

Significance

Trubus was Indonesia's defining agriculture magazine. Founded in December 1969 by a farmers' social foundation, sustained through financial crises by its own book-publishing profits, and carried for decades by the Bina Swadaya organisation, it taught generations of Indonesian readers — first farmers, then the urban city farmers who became its loyal base, with a circulation of around 50,000 reported at its 25th anniversary — how to grow, protect and sell agricultural products. It created trends in Indonesian horticulture, trained new agribusiness entrants through its courses, and outlasted almost every comparable title, publishing in print until December 2024 before continuing as trubus.id. Its history is a case study in how a mission-driven specialist magazine can survive for more than half a century.