A team of Universitas Gadjah Mada students from the Student Creativity Program in Social Sciences and Humanities Research (PKM-RSH) is researching the corporate farming (land consolidation) program in Bantul Regency.
This corporate farming program is an initiative to address land use changes and agricultural land fragmentation issues in Bantul Regency. It was initiated by the Bantul Regency Government, Bank Indonesia, and the Faculty of Agriculture at UGM.
The research, titled “Innovation Adoption by Farmers: Examining the Role of Community Capital in the Corporate Farming Program in Bantul Regency,” aims to investigate the relationship between innovation adoption by farmers in Blawong I and the role of various community capitals, including natural, physical, political, human, economic, social, and cultural capital.
The PKM-RSH team is led by Dian Rahmanisa (Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness), Diva Novitasari (Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness), and Indri Oktaviani Ningrum (Cultural Anthropology) under the guidance of Dr. Alia Bihrajihant Raya, a lecturer in Agricultural Extension and Communication at UGM.
Dian Rahmanisa, the research team leader, stated, “With this research on the relationship between community capital and innovation adoption by farmers, we hope to evaluate and improve the existing corporate farming system by adjusting the community capitals in Blawong Hamlet. This will help form social capital that will support the success of corporate farming in the future sustainable agricultural development.”
Corporate farming or land consolidation has been proposed as a solution to agricultural problems related to one of the farming inputs, land, in the Bantul Regency. The shrinking size of agricultural land is a limiting factor in declining agricultural production. One way to address this issue is by expanding agricultural land through land consolidation and eliminating fragmented land boundaries.
By doing so, the agricultural land can become more extensive, allowing technology such as harvesters and transplanters to be utilized. Land consolidation/corporate farming can address the issues of shrinking agricultural land, and joint land management will increase farmer productivity.
The research was conducted by distributing questionnaires to farmers in the Barokah Blawong I farmer group. According to Akhid Yusron (62), the farmer group leader, corporate farming/land consolidation has significant potential for agricultural development, especially in urban agriculture.
However, human resource management has not been optimal in practice, preventing the program from progressing. He hoped better mechanisms would be in place if the land consolidation program could be re-implemented.
Author: Agung Nugroho