One of the garden plots within Bangli prison. Credit:Fairfax Media Twan v doesn't know it, but he may never again eat an "intense amuse-bouche" as ethically sound. Even Plasmeijer was unaware of the remarkable story behind the vegetables he grows in a lovingly tended plot outside his Ubud home. The chef buys his organic vegetable seeds from IDEP Foundation, an Indonesian NGO that specialises in permaculture and disaster management. IDEP staff also tend his garden a couple of days a week. But what Plasmeijer didn't know is that most of the seeds are produced at Bali's newest jail, Bangli prison. IDEP Foundation calls them Seeds for Change.

The IDEP Foundation sells produce from the prison garden to restaurants including Ubud Deli, Bali Buda, Pizza Bagus and Alchemy. Credit:Fairfax Media "I think that's pretty cool," Plasmeijer says when he learns of their origin. "Maybe I could do some cooking up there?" The value of prison gardens has been documented worldwide. Nelson Mandela became an avid gardener while in South African prisons, growing vegetables to supplement the boring diet. "A garden is one of the few things in prison that one could control ... Being a custodian of this patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom," he says in Anna Trapido's food-based biography Hunger for Freedom. The San Francisco county jail garden project put prison vegetables on the map after American chef and activist Alice Waters served them at her Californian restaurant, Chez Panisse. Prison counsellor Cathrine Sneed came up with the idea after reading John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.

"The families in the novel found hope in their connectedness to their land," she wrote in Yes! magazine. "I thought about my job at the jail. I didn't have much to offer the prisoners, but what I could give them was the opportunity to go outside and work on the jail grounds … Maybe they, too, could find a way to connect to the land." In Janet Flammang's book The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics and Civil Society, Waters credits Sneed with teaching her "that it's not just working in the garden that helps these inmates. It's the offering of food to other people that changes them." But IDEP believes the Bangli prison organic garden is a world-first for prison rehabilitation programs: not only does it produce vegetables but it also cultivates organic seeds. These are bought by IDEP Foundation, which sells them at Bali institutions including Ubud Deli, Bali Buda, Little Tree, Pizza Bagus, Manik Organik and Alchemy and – crucially – local farmers impoverished by corporate agrifood systems. IDEP Foundation executive director Ade Andreawan says Bangli's prison farmers fill the gap in organic supply chains. "They are providing nourishment for tens of thousands across Bali and helping to strengthen Indonesia's food sovereignty," Andreawan says.

Many seeds are now patented by multinational biotech companies such as Monsanto, one of the world's leading producers of genetically-modified foods. "IDEP in Bali is one of the few providers of open pollinated seeds you can use from generation to generation," says Adam Breasley, an Australian who works with Mantasa, a research institute that studies the use of wild plants for food. "It is becoming harder and harder to source seeds that are not owned by companies. There is also less and less diversity in the food crops we are eating." In Kediri and Nganjuk regencies in East Java, farmers have even been prosecuted for breeding their own corn seeds after seed company PT Bisi accused them of stealing patented seeds. At Bangli prison, in verdant central Bali, inmates grow 17 organic vegetables, including jack beans, chilli, cucumbers and tomatoes, on two plots inside and outside the jail walls.

I Nengah Arnawa, a farmer who was jailed for six years for corruption, is a convert to organic farming. "Growing produce organically might take a little longer till we can harvest, but the produce itself last longer, more than double than if you grow it with chemicals," Nengah says. He gestures to a papaya tree near the prison wall. "That's one of the first trees we grew organically, it's been five years, it's still healthy and continues to gives us papayas. If you grow it with chemicals, it would've died after first harvest, maybe less than a year." Nengah says he will continue organic farming when he goes home. Inmates are also provided with organic seeds on their release. "I found the program very important. It teaches us very useful information," he says. "Working here takes our mind off things, we work two hours in the morning, then again in the afternoon. It gives us something to do. We don't just stay in our room and do nothing." The money the Bangli prison organic farm made from its first harvest was used to build a biogas stove. The stove is fuelled with organic waste from lichen and pig manure from a nearby farm. "We use the produce in the kitchen here to add to our meals," says Nengah. "It's healthy to eat organic."

Bangli prison's highest-profile inmate, Bali nine mule Renae Lawrence, does not participate in the Seeds for Change program, which is for male prisoners. But she is a beneficiary: the food, she says, is a step up from Kerobokan jail, where it was dished out of a cart. At Bangli, each prisoner receives their own container with compartments for chicken, rice and sometimes homegrown vegetables. "We just know the food we get is fresh and organic," Lawrence says. In 2012, Mary Farrow stumbled across Bangli during an internet search for "prison farms". Farrow, a community resilience expert from Melbourne, had been helping Bali nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran develop their ideas for rehabilitation programs in Kerobokan jail. Farrow is the director of Emerald Community House, a charity in the Dandenongs that also specialises in permaculture and disaster management.

Sukumaran had been keen to establish a permaculture garden at Kerobokan prison and had shown Farrow a photo of a gnarly patch of land at the back of the death row tower that could be suitable. After her serendipitous internet search, Farrow got in touch with IDEP Foundation. "Ade and I connected in the quirky world of disaster management and permaculture," Farrow says. "How weird to find somewhere else that was happening." IDEP drafted a plan for the permaculture garden at Kerobokan prison, although a more modest version was ultimately set up by another environmental group. However Farrow and Andreawan now have an "unbreakable bond" and seek each other's advice on projects in their respective countries. "They've taken Andrew and Myuran away, but we still have that relationship," Farrow says.

Both Australia and Indonesia are disaster-prone. Australia faces regular bushfires and floods, while Indonesia is vulnerable to earthquakes and floods. There is a vital need for seed-saving programs such as Seeds for Change in both countries. "Australia has an affection for heirloom plants," Farrow says. "It's important if something happens to be able to go back and reseed." Andreawan would like to see Seeds for Change rolled out in jails across Indonesia. "This is a critical function in an area of high risk where regional farms can be devastated by a natural disaster. And prisoners learn and teach new skills and grow respect of self and others as they repent for social ills, heal their hurts and feed collective futures." with Amilia Rosa Follow FairfaxForeign on Twitter