2015 Youth Ag-Summit essay

Indonesia Gardening Community

By Millatina Fadhilah

Indonesia is the 19th largest country in terms of land mass and it has a high
population density, too. As the 4th most populous country on earth, Indonesia's
2014 population is estimated at 252.8 million. This situation demands increasing
number of food and shelter. In my point of view as an architecture student, the
problem is the development target in most cities nowadays is clearly seen
focused on the development of residential and business areas. This is
exacerbated by the condition of forestry and agricultural land in the suburbs that
has been converted to residential or industrial areas. To answer this challenge,
Agriculture Intensification. This method is an attempt to optimize the limited land
to be more productive and able to provide food security. One way is through
community movement and urban agriculture.
The food security issue in Indonesia is caused by several reasons. The
main reason in my opinion is the loss of agricultural land. As a result, productive
farmland is decreasing and a pending food crisis is expected in the near future.
Indonesia loss about 100.000 hectare agricultural land every year. The farmers
tend to sell their farm to converted into residential or industrial area. The farmers
who usually are poor , tend to sell their farm, and move to the big city. With this
decreasing number of land for growing food, the production cant meet the
demand from the big population. The second main issue , come from the youth,
the younger generation. Indonesia is one of the largest crop producer in the
world. Indonesia has so many rooms and needs to develop a technologies about
agriculture. So, many universities in Indonesia has faculty of agriculture , which
supposed to be a support for this country. The fact is many of agriculture
graduates , dontt want or had no interest to work or to do a reseach about
agriculture. Mostly , they choose to work on bank because of the salary. It shows
how poor the agricultural field for mostly Indonesian youth. This two main
issues has caused Indonesia has to import some of main crops such as rice and
soybean even if Indonesia used to known as rice exporting countries.

Food insecurity in Indonesia which led to increasing imports rate from

other country has so many side effect. The price of crops of food product has
increasing everywhere. Like the other developing countries , poor people are the
most affected by this. The demands for the product are so high, it can led to
inflation in the country. The imported products sometimes cheaper than a local
products, and it slowly kills the agricultural business n the country. The other side
effect is carbon footprint. We still in the middle of global warming issues.
Imported crops has a higher carbon footprint than a local product. The crops has
to travel such a long way from one country to another. And we cant ignore the
fact that many imported crops has so many chemical subtances on it to prevent
corps from rotting. It will affect the health of our people
Theres two different main problem as it mention before, limited
agricultural land and human resources. My proposed solution is agriculture
intensification by combining technologies, research and urban people is to create
urban farming community movement. This solution can be started from the
people, the citizen first. To start this movement, people can start from their own
community garden such at neighborhood, school, and office. We cant just wait
from the stakeholder to make an action or to issue regulation. Start from their
own yard. Indonesian used to produce their own food at their own backyard.
They plant many kinds of holticultural crops for their family. At school, student in
Indonesia used to learn about gardening but now mostly students loooked down
to farming or gardening. This activities utilizing non-productive land in urban
areas by planting useful crops in a way that makes it as a productive garden.
Every weekend the community plant, treat, and harvest various plants at the
area lent by the owner to be tilled. The movement of the community can be
conducted in a modern way, such as using social media mostly twitter, to
socialize their movement and ask everyone to join with their action. This is an
effective way to spread the spirit because Indonesia has a higher proportion of
internet user sign in to twitter than the other countries. And we already start the
movement called Indonesia Berkebun or Indonesia Gardening for few years
now. It was initiated with bottom-up method. It does not depend on the
government or private even though it always opens for positive collaboration
from any parties. Start at Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, we already have
many urban farming project all over the city. From conventional community
garden, until rooftop garden on high rise building. I started this movement on my

campus, University of Indonesia, back in 2013. Our campus community garden

has already produced vegetables that can be bought by student, lecturer or the
cafetaria. We ask other universities and other cities all over Indonesia to start the
same movement by social media and now our activities have been spread across
32 cities and 9 campuses throughout the country. We try to make gardening as a
new lifestlye for urban people and in the long term to reach food self-sufficiency
for their own family. Many people from different background join this movement
as a volunteer , therefore we also provide free educational training once every
two months to our volunteer and also to community who willing to start their
urban garden. We hope that urban farming activities can transmit the spirit to
citizens especially for the next generation to become more resilient and selfcontained towards food crisis. These activities need some sustainable financial
plan to face the possibility of becoming bigger in the future. There is some idea
to establish a foundation to get funds or professional company to sell some
harvesting products for running the community.
Those kind of movement need more support and collaboration with many
organization. By participating in Youth Agricultural summit, I will use this chance
to elaborate this movement with all the participants so they can have some
ideas for their country and also get some knowledge from other participants to
be adopt in this movement. Also to get more support from stakeholder like
goverment or private to continue and make this urban gardening movement in
my country, Indonesia grow bigger, and can be solid solution for food insecurity
in Indonesia

REFERENCES
http://www.indonesia-investments.com/id/bisnis/komoditas/beras/item183
http://indonesiaberkebun.org/
http://www.ptpn-11.com/alih-fungsi-lahan-pertanian-susut-hingga-100ribu-hektar-pertahun.html