Rescope Radio

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 matte