Agricultural Transformation: IPB Promotes Padi Estate Community And Village Campus

Illustration of farmers (ANTARA)

BOGOR Professor of IPB University, Prof. Dr. Ir Amiruddin Saleh, initiated two strategies: Estate Padi Community (KEP) and Village Campus. Both models are offered as a new approach to building farmers' independence and strengthening village institutions.

In his pre-ocracy which was held on Thursday, July 24, Prof. Amiruddin emphasized the importance of paradigm change in agricultural development. According to him, it is time for farmers and villagers to no longer be positioned as just the object of program implementation, but as the main subject who has the role and right to design their own future.

"Agricultural transformation cannot only rely on technical or institutional management approaches. An adaptive model is needed, is based on group communication, and supported by digital technology so that farmers and villages can be independent and competitive," said Prof. Amiruddin.

The first idea, the Estate Padi Community or KEP, is a collective agricultural model developed to answer structural challenges that often attract small farmers, such as narrow land ownership, low production efficiency, weak bargaining positions in the market, and the lack of regeneration of young farmers.

With a regional approach and collective management, KEP brings together the entire value chain of rice production from seeding, cultivation, processing of crops, to marketing in an integrated and democratic system. In it, farmers are actively involved through a representative forum called the Farmers' and Land Cultivators' Forum (FP4L), which acts as a forum for collective decision making.

This model has been piloted in seven districts in Java and Sumatra, and shows significant results: increased productivity, farmer business efficiency, and the birth of a number of community-based agribusiness startups. KEP is also an arena for agricultural modernization with the use of technology such as superior IPB 3S seeds, drones for fertilization, precision irrigation systems, and digital marketing training.

However, according to Prof. Amiruddin, the success of KEP is not only because of the technology used, but because of the strength of group communication that grows from below. KEP, he said, is not just a modern agribusiness model, but a new democratic, inclusive, and sustainable social space.

KEP is not just a modern agricultural model. It is a social space where farmers form democratic forums, share knowledge, and adopt digital technologies such as drones, mechanization, and marketplaces," he explained.

The second idea that Prof. Amiruddin carries is Village Campus, a community-based alternative education approach (community-based education) and project-based learning (project-based learning). This program is designed to bridge the gap between universities and rural communities, as well as overcome structural gaps in the development of human resources in rural areas.

Through the Village Campus, students and lecturers not only come to bring knowledge, but become part of the village community as co-learners who live with residents, listen to their problems, and design solutions collaboratively. The process begins with pre-departure training, participatory social mapping, collective action program design, field implementation, to reflection in residents' forums.

This program has been running since 2018 in more than 60 villages and sub-districts in the Bogor area, involving the IPB Vocational School, Human Resources Development Center (P2SDM), as well as partners from within and outside the country, including the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada.

"The main problem of village development is not the lack of technology, but the weakness of communication and social organization. The Village Campus is here as a joint space to manage changes from below," said Prof. Amiruddin.

However, he also highlighted a number of challenges that still have to be faced, such as institutional long-term programs, active involvement of women in decision making, as well as the need for competent local facilitators and a sustainable mentoring system.

In closing, Prof. Amiruddin invited all stakeholders to encourage the birth of development policies that are more in favor of the people. He mentioned the need for a shift in perspective: from development for the people (development for the people), to development by the people (development by the people).

"We need policies that place farmers and villagers as the subject of development, not just program implementers. This is in line with the direction of national development such as red and white cooperatives," he concluded.

The two ideas of the Estate Padi and Village Campus represent serious efforts to build a sustainable agricultural and rural ecosystem. Both unite social, technology, institutional and cultural aspects into one breath: create a village future that is independent, productive, and sovereign in the hands of its own people.