Institutional development of farmers through agricultural area-based corporations in Indonesia

Abstract

Institutional development of farmers through corporations in agricultural areas in Indonesia faces basic problems with both formal organization and weak organizational capacity, thus partly causing institutional strengthening programs for farmers rather hard to achieve. This study aims to identify and formulate policy recommendations regarding the institutional development and its integration as necessary partners of agricultural area-based corporations. The analysis used is descriptive qualitative through interviews with key informants (key informants). The research itself was conducted at the Ministry of Agriculture in 2022. The results show that the integration of farmer institutions is carried out in a regional approach, providing a regional development management by building farmer corporations which process is carried out in Kostratani units. Meanwhile, the concept of a farmer corporation itself is only implicitly contained in Law No. 19 of 2013 concerning the Protection and Empowerment of Farmers, which is called the Farmer Economic Institution. Explicitly the concept of “farmer corporations” is stated in the Minister of Agriculture Number 18 of 2018 concerning Guidelines for the Development of Farmers’ Corporation-Based Agricultural Areas. Ensuring the development of corporate institutions can run well, it is necessary that the present farmer institutions in the form of Poktan and Gapoktan which are not that legally official as corporation entities, must be integrated with legal entities, namely cooperatives or companies.