Rich marginalized millennials through sustainable entrepreneurship in an integrated dryland farming of Eastern Nusa Tenggara Province

Abstraksi

In agriculture, the initiative was made on introducing green skills and practices to marginalized youths in Timor Tengah Utara (TTU) and Timor Tengah Selatan (TTS) Districts to grow fruits and vegetables which have high adaptation to climate changes as well as having high market price so that they youths can make income out of their selling. In veterinary sector, there were interventions to the local value chain of livestock in 5 districts (Belu, Malaka, TTU, TTS, and Kupang) to enable competitiveness environment within the value chains. Meanwhile, in fishery sector, the certain initiatives have been made on introducing environmentally-friendly sustainable technologies and safety standards on fish processing. In all of these efforts, YPII and its implementing partners develop business models with at least 6,000 marginalized youths (> 60% of the youths were females) before providing soft skills, technical capacities, and access to capital to set up and run the business models. To ensure well establishment of the businesses, series of coaching sessions were provided to the youths who have been organized in small and micro enterprise groups. The youths were made exposed to natural resources available locally to create alternative incomes and finally improve their economic status from transactions they made in the market. This paper presents implementation strategies to improve the value chains of the integrated farming system, improved financial situations of the youths participating in the initiatives, business opportunities, and best practices developed during the implementations of the projects. In the green skill interventions (green skill project), youths and other stakeholders were trained on how to grow various highly demanded horticulture crops in an estimated land area so that the yield could give enough income to the youths. After certain periods of implementations, there were at least 3 steering committees provided their technical recommendation based on their evaluations. Under this approach, 8.8% of the youths has income more than 1.5 million IDRs (or, above minimum wage). With enough capacity to analyze and manage business, youths within this group were able to expand their farming areas where they can plant 3 times per year and practice environmentally-friendly agriculture in entire farms. On the other hand, there were 42.6% of the youth beneficiaries have income around 1 to 1.5 million IDRs with 2 times planting per annum with limited in expanding areas. Though not all, they have been able to reduce chemical applications partially on their practices. Below these two youth groups, there were 20% of the total youths with a minimum income of 600 hundred to 1 million IDRs from one planting time per annum in the same farm lands where applications of chemicals were still high. The youths were able to succeed because they were introduced to new technologies including dripped irrigation which was able to concentrate the watering to horticulture crops and therefore, reduced weed population and erosion. The reductions, off course, will have impact to significant reduction on production cost. In some crops, the youths applied a conservation agriculture principal to cover the ground surface using mulch. Again, the mulching reduced weed population and evaporations. During the capacity building processes, the youths were able to be convinced on job opportunities available in agriculture sector as an alternative for limited job available nowadays. To have best-selling product, using their market analysis capacity, they only grew crops that were predicted to have high market prices in certain season. Finally, the introduction of environmentally-friendly practices has saved soils from inorganic pollutions which is good for health and therefore, increase their products’ prices. The business opportunities grown up as a result of the green skill interventions were on the applications of dripped irrigation systems, mulching technologies, micro financing to suffice the capital need of 820s million IDRs or 1.3 to 6 million IDRs per youth farmer, processing and off taking products. On the livestock value chain initiatives (livestock project), 8 community social organizations (CSOs) were supported to develop various business models on livestock rearing in certain demo plots to intervene each unit value chain in the livestock sector of the region, and therefore, created more competitive climate on the livestock development in the region. The interventions have given the youth cow farmers income for about 1.5 to 2.5 million IDRs per farmer in at least a year. The pig farmers, due to the intervetion, earned 0.5 to 1 million IDRs per year. Meanwhile, for fattening chicken, the monthly net income was arround 2 to 3 million IDRs and for the breeding chicken, the net income was arround 0.5 to 1 million IDR per annum. The livestock initiative has developed various business models including exchanges of feedstock and piglets/seedling, development of local feedstock, on call artificial insemination and natural mating, selling piglets to local government to distribute to other local communities, cash and livestock credit system, and the use of organic fertilizer made of manure to grow horticulture. Potential businesses that can be developed in the future are on call artificial insemination, bio-gas production to suffice domestic energy needs, and insurance for small and big size livestock. During the livestock project implementation, some best practices have been introduced to the CSOs, youths, and finally, to local communities. Regarding technology, there have been introduced ideal rearing models followeed by local feedstock development to increase the body weight in much faster ways and finally, reduce the livestock rearing period. For cow farming, for instance, the growing period has been reduced from 2 to 3 years to less than 1.6 years whereas for pig farming, the growing period has been reduced to at least 6 months from 1.5 to 2 years. The pigs and the cows were sold at the end of these short growing period because the daily weight increase has been improved significantly too. Based on the monitoring data from several cow groups, the daily weight gain of cows has improved from 250 to 350 grams per day.