A Look at the Success of Urban Farmers in Rorotan, North Jakarta

Saturday, April 28, 2018, students of the Department of Geography, Agricultural Geography class under the guidance of Mrs. Dra. Tuty Handayani, MS and Mrs. Ratri Candra Restuti, M.Si as the course instructors visited Rorotan Village, Cilincing District, North Jakarta City. This activity aims to equip students with agricultural management in urban areas. The field visit began with a discussion with agricultural extension workers, the head of the Farmers Group Association (GAPOKTAN) and representatives of farmers from Rorotan Village. Furthermore, students conducted a survey of the agricultural area and conducted direct interviews with farmers. Participants were divided into two large groups, namely the vegetable team and the rice team. Thus, it is hoped that this activity will provide students in the Agricultural Geography class with complete information based on the type of agriculture that
cultivated by farmers.

Arriving at the agricultural location, we were surprised because we did not expect there to be many rice fields located in a metropolitan city like Jakarta. However, according to information from the Agricultural Extension Office staff, agricultural land in the Rorotan sub-district has decreased drastically since 2005. The reduction in agricultural land is inseparable from the massive construction of housing and shophouses which has caused agricultural land to be increasingly evicted. It was even more ironic when we found out that 90% of the agricultural land cultivated by these farmers is land owned by developers so that at any time this agricultural land can be evicted and replaced with housing or shophouses.

Based on the interview results, we know that the farmers are not native residents of Rorotan Village, but come from the northern and southern coastal areas such as Indramayu, Tegal, Pemalang to Cilacap, we even found that there were also farmers from Lampung. Their motivation to farm in Jakarta is none other than because of the limited land ownership in their hometowns, making it difficult for them to farm in their hometowns. In addition, there are also farmers who are motivated only to try farming in the city of Jakarta. This is quite unique considering that they left their hometowns with a future that they themselves do not yet know whether it will be successful or not.

Regarding planting patterns, vegetable farmers revealed that so far they have been doing agricultural business by planting crops according to current market trends. This is basically very risky for farmers, because if the crops they plant only rely on market needs when it can happen that when the harvest season arrives, the price in the market is down while the supply of related products is increasing. This condition can be detrimental to farmers because it is very possible that the selling price of related commodities will be very low as happened several years ago with tomatoes.

Another aspect explored from interviews with farmers is about maintenance and seeding. Farmers said that in general, the farming that is attempted uses personal labor or does not have employees to help with farming.
They only occasionally pay wages to other workers to help during harvest or planting time if extra labor is needed.

Meanwhile, regarding capital and distribution of harvest results, farmers said that capital during the planting to harvest period relies on personal funds. The unavailability of agricultural cooperatives and the lack of trust of banks in providing soft loans are obstacles when these farmers will carry out the planting and maintenance period. This will also have an impact on the harvest results. According to them, the harvest they produce is directly sold to middlemen considering the market's distrust of them to market their products directly. As for how to borrow money for agricultural capital, it is usually through middlemen. Middlemen are the transporters of farmers' harvests from the rice fields directly. The capital loan system will be repaid by directly deducting the price of the harvest weight transported by the middlemen. In addition, middlemen often lend capital to farmers with a profit-sharing agreement when harvesting. This incident will benefit farmers when
facing agricultural shortages.

The existence of Gapoktan (Farmer Group Association) also helps farmers, both individuals and groups, in running their agricultural businesses. In one farmer group, the members of the farmer group will help each other in implementing agriculture. One of the farmers we interviewed who is a member of the Makmur Jaya farmer group said that when all farmer groups (Gapoktan) gather, it is usually held during the nursery and pest control period, while during harvest and irrigation, the entire Gapoktan rarely gather because when harvesting, the farmers will focus on working on their respective harvests. While irrigation uses rainwater and when it is not the rainy season, irrigation utilizes the Melaka River.

With this field visit activity, we gained knowledge that agriculture in Rorotan Village has been running well. However, land ownership issues and limited capital have made Rorotan Village agriculture unable to progress like agriculture in other areas. Another problem in agriculture in DKI Jakarta is that very high pollution makes the quality of soil, water, and air very poor so that it is very difficult to produce organic products. The existence of this problem of the quality of natural resources provides a conclusion. For the local Gapoktan, vegetable farming is more profitable than rice because
processing from seeding to harvest takes less time compared to
paddy

News source: https://sci.ui.ac.id/