THE sky is still dark when a bunch of young men in work clothes head for the garden. A garden party in the morning? No. Despite occasional laughter and jokes, the youths are busy planting vegetables, cultivating rubber seedlings and hoeing the soil. Obviously they are not having a picnic.

They are the students of the State Development Agricultural School (SPPN), Sembawa, some 30 kilometers from Palembang. They are learning to become farmers. Eac