The Model of Rural Youth Empowerment through Red Chili Farming in Sindangkasih Sub-district of Ciamis, Indonesia

Abstract

Decreasing number of farmers for the last ten years tended to obviously massively increase. According to Statistics of Indonesia (Badan Pusat Statistik, BPS), there was annual decline of 1.1 percent during the period 2010-2017. In term of farmer age, it is worrying that most farmers are currently ageing. Result of Agricultural Census (Sensus Pertanian) in 2013 showed that 61.8 percent of farmers were older than 45 years, and it was only 12.2 percent of farmers aged below 35 years. This situation is inline with the result of study of People Coalition for Food Sovereignty or (Koalisi Rakyat Kedaulatan Pangan (KRKP, 2016) which showed that 54 percent of horticultural farmers' children did not want to be a farmer, while higher percentage of 63 percent was obtained from the children of rice field farmers. Hence, this reason is quite enough to prove that our country of farmers in particular and crisis of human resources in general. To prevent the declining number of people working in agricultural sector, such anticipatory effort is required and possibly conducted through program of capacity building and assistance to increase rural community involvement in agricultural program which further will grow their interest and improve empowerment of farmer. Empowerment is an effort to improve the skill of community, either individual or group through activity/program that is designed according to their needs. Rural youth empowerment is applied to increase interest and skill of young people to be familiar with agricultural sector. In this context of empowerment, the commodity selected is strategic commodity that also becomes the major commodity in the region. Red chili is one of strategic commodities widely grown in Sindangkasih Subdistrict, Ciamis Regency. Therefore, rural youth empowerment through red chili farming is necessary to perform in order to increase youth awareness and interest in agriculture. Based on the explanation above, the focus of problem in rural area is the low level of youth empowerment in red chili farming, thus effort in the form of empowerment is required. Subsequently, problem formulation in this study included: (1) To what extent is the level of rural youth empowerment through chili farming in Sindangkasih Subdistrict?, (2) What factors affecting rural youth empowerment through chili farming in Sindangkasih Subdistrict?, and (3) What

Rural Community Empowerment through the Utilization of Straw as Compost

“…Based on the description above, a research framework is built based on the hypothesis that there are a number of variables that can affect the empowerment of a person or community group. Effendy et al [3] explained the youth involvement to increase the youth empowerment. Meanwhile, [2] Effendy and Sudiro argued about factors that affect the woman empowerment in land use are external factors and farmer group supports.…”

“…This result is in line with [4], [5], [6], who reported that the personal characteristic component is an important indicator in increasing empowerment. In addition, empowerment can also be determined by factors from outside the characteristics, such as a person's involvement in a program or activity [3], also determined by external factors such as; availability of infrastructure, extension activities, farmer group functions, and access to information [7], [8] [9] [10]. Meanwhile, Permana and Effendy [11] explained that the empowerment of women farmer groups is significantly influenced by external factors consisting of; support for group members, the availability of facilities and infrastructure, policy support, and outreach activities.…”