August 5, 2014 edition

The air smells of fish. But the four men hard at work at Sukiran's house in Pacitan regency, East Java, seem to ignore it. They continue on with their task: separating tuna flesh and skin from the bones. By the looks of it they are quite adept. In one day they can slice three to five tons into boneless fillets. That goes into a grinder with tapioca, garlic, salt, pepper and flavoring, and the resulting elastic dough becomes filling for tofu cakes.
Now it is the female workers' turn to insert the dough into cakes which have been slit in the middle. After that, the cakes are cooked in boiling, seasoned water. The male workers take back over. "It's to cook the tuna dough well and make the tofu more piquant," said Dwi Santoso, 24, one of the men.

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More Smes articles in other editions

January 1, 1970 edition

THREE o'clock in the afternoon is an important hour for Sandy Afrianto. That is the best time to initiate breeding of his six-month-old vaname mother shrimp. From five ponds teeming with females, Sandy moved 45 of them to other ponds full of males.
Four hours later, Sandy examined the females one by one, placing the fertilized ones in a breeding vessel. "Normally 80 percent of the interbreeding works," said the 24-year-old shrimp breeder at the Aquaculture Center (BBAP) in Situbondo regency, East Java.
The BBAP, which operates under the Fisheries Ministry in Sitobondo's Gelung village, specializes in producing prime carriers and spawn of the Vaname Nusantara 1 (VN-1) variety. The cultivation center was established to boost national shrimp production, which has been in a slump since 2000.

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January 1, 1970 edition

Hundreds of women could be seen working in silence. Some of them were wearing surgical masks. Although their mouths were covered, their hands worked quickly turning over and separating brown dried tobacco leaves. Other women could be seen skilfully rolling the leaves into sausage-shaped wads.
"In these rooms, you wouldn't be able smell it if anyone was wearing perfume. It would get lost out to the aroma of tobacco," Hari Mulyadi, assistant manager for technical operations at the Mangli Djaja Raja (MDR) Tobacco Warehouse in Jember, told Tempo on Monday last week.
Hari, 56, was not exaggerating. Inside the warehouse where cigars are produced, the aroma was indeed overpowering. "It's because you're not used to it," he said.

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