Successful young farmers in Indonesia certainly do not feel inferior. It is undeniable that there are still a few young people who want to become successful young farmers in Indonesia. You don’t need to feel inferior if you want to be a young farmer. If there are no farmers, people can’t eat and can’t process a variety of foods with healthy raw materials.
Being a farmer is not something to be ashamed of, as long as the young generation understand the principles of farming. President Joko Widodo once expressed his concern about the future of agricultural sector in Indonesia, there are many agricultural graduates but choose to work in an office, for example as bank employees. President Jokowi’s concern is reasonable, because farmers have an enourmous contribution to national food security.
Yayasan Agri Sustineri Indonesia (YASI) will explain it further. In the 2013 BPS (Biro Pusat Statistic) data, it is stated that around 61 percent of farmers in Indonesia are over 45 years of age. There are many millennial generations who think that farming profession is less cool and has a bleak future compared to other professions.
As population increases, the need for food also increases. Then who will provide it if not farmers?
Tips for Becoming a Successful Young Farmer in Indonesia
The first tip, of course, is getting started. He said that millennials are actually more creative than previous generations, but the idea is only in their minds. The second tip, take an unusual idea. Observe the opportunities that exist and act immediately. Take advantage of technology to make it easier to work as a smart farmer. One of them is to invite other farmers and share knowledge so that success is not only achieved by themselves, but also for others.
Successful Young Farmers in Indonesia with Technology Support
The growing phenomenon of millennial generation’s enthusiasm to join agricultural sector is a new energy for agricultural development in Indonesia. Agricultural regeneration which has become a frightening issue has slowly but surely been answered by the development of millennial farmers who are not only engaged in the downstream but also in the upstream sector.
What the public know is that millennial farmers are active only in the post-harvest business. In fact that there are many millennial generations participate directly in cultivation process. Farmer regeneration issue is not only faced by Indonesia but almost all countries in the world are having the same issue. What makes the younger generation still reluctant to join agriculture sector are the psychological and economic factors.
There is a stigma that farmers are still considered a lower-class job and revenue in agriculture sector is lower compared to non-agricultural sectors. However, along with development of technology and information, millennials are eager to get involved in agriculture. They know that behind the challenges, revenue that can be achieved from agriculture by becoming a successful young farmer in Indonesia is very promising.
The characteristics of young farmers are adaptive to technological developments and innovative. There are many new things that have been successfully applied by them, breaking deadlock in development of agricultural businesses and most important is creating new potential markets. Citing data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), there are currently at least 2.7 million farmers, including millennial farmers, out of a total of 33 million farmers in Indonesia.
Apart from being young, under 39 years of age, those who are categorized as millennial farmers are farmers with minimum educational background of high school graduate, innovative and adaptive, specifically in optimization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), creative in utilizing agricultural machines and tools.
Therefore, there are various millennial farmers’ creativity that emerge, for example during the pandemic.
Some Principles of Successful Young Farmers in Indonesia
Here are some principles for aspiring young successful farmers in Indonesia that have been summarized by Yayasan Yayasan Agri Sustineri Indonesia (YASI).
- Keep innovating
Innovation is main success principle in achieving success for young farmers, whether from technology or knowledge of nursery. Creating new things that are more advanced certainly requires high creativity from the farmers themselves. Creativity is an important in agricultural production to be more efficient and effective in order to improve farmers welfare. - Must have spirit
The spirit of success must be embedded in people who want to be successful, including farmers. At a young age, millennials who want to be farmers must work hard in developing agricultural sector, productive, discipline, value time and optimistic on yields to be achieved. - Expanding target market
Farmers must know target market reach. Knowing target market is important for farmers to optimize products selling. In the current millennial era, expanding target market can be done by utilizing technology to cover all Indonesia, even all of the world. - Produce quality products
Product quality is the main important thing in farming. For quality products, farmers must be diligent in managing/cultivating their fields considering that market price will be determined by product quality. - Converting circumstances into opportunities
Farmers in Indonesia often do farming based on season and popularity of agricultural products.
