Japan-ASEAN Ambassador for Food and Agriculture, Melody Nurramdhani L, who is popularly known as a member of JKT48 music group has asked the young generation to care for agricultural sector.
“Indonesia has great potential in agriculture which is unparalleled by other countries,” she told UGM students in a talkshow themed Face of Agriculture for Future Generation on Sunday (9/4) at UGM Faculty of Agriculture.
Melody said it was very important for the young generation to sustain the country’s sustainability in terms of agriculture. She encouraged the youth to fight for and sustain Indonesia’s agriculture in order to realise national food sovereignty.
"Don’t get scared to get occupied in agriculture sector and play an active role in advancing Indonesia’s agriculture,” she asked.
Meanwhile, founder of Indonesia Berkebun, Sigit Kusumawijaya, said currently Indonesia was facing a crisis in terms of farmer regeneration. Interest has been decreasing from time to time in agriculture sector. In addition, Indonesia is facing the decreasing size of agricultural lands due to land conversion problems.
“Not a few countries are facing food crisis. Presently, Indonesia has no crisis problems, but the size of agricultural lands has continuously been decreasing while the young generation does not want to become farmers,” he said.
Therefore, raising awareness and interest among the young generation in agriculture endeavours needs to be given attention to by everyone. Activist of Desa Wisata Hijau (Green Tourism Village), Putton Soraya Isfandiari, said this was the main focus of building society awareness towards agriculture. Farmers are associated with villages, but society is not always eager to do farming. Available lands are often not cultivated optimally.
“Many agricultural lands in the village are abandoned. So, it’s important to remind them if they have agricultural, productive assets,” she said.
Meanwhile, the issue of technology use for agriculture was raised by founder of Platform Crowde, Yohanes Sugihtononugroho. He viewed that farmers were technology savvy already and made good use of it for their daily life. But they have yet to implement it to increase the agricultural yields.
“The challenge has been to encourage the farmers to make use of the technology they know very well to increase the agricultural productions,” he said.
The talkshow is part of a series of Tanivolusi events organised by UGM agriculture students. Other events are agricultural product expo, photo and poster exhibition, and vlog, photo, and poster competition that was joined by no less than 100 participants from across Indonesia. The event is done every 2 years to promote agricultural products and scope to high school students.