Agricom.id, JAKARTA – Many young generations do not want to do agriculture business though they graduated from the agriculture faculty. The agriculture and the profession as the farmers may not be interesting to do.

But there must be young generations graduated from the agriculture faculty want to do agriculture business, such as, Herdinda Arum Pradipta whose nickname is Arum. The graduated of food technology told his experience in agriculture in TIK-Talk (Tani Inspiratif Kekinian Talkshow) withing the theme "Tren Bisnis Pertanian di Era Kekinian" held in the House of Tani (HOT), Friday (14/8/2020), in the Agribusiness Information Center, Head Quarter of Ministry of Agriculture, South Jakarta.

Arum, the owner of Griya Pangan Arum Ayu consistently produces healthy food from non – wheat flour and local foods. Besides producing, Arum also develops the groups to encourage the local food diversity as the main commodity.

She does the local food business because she was inspired by her mother, who is the pioneer of food security. “We want to continue what my mother has done. Not only producing cake, this business is the way to make the original food process innovation from the commodities in Indonesia,” she said, as in the official written statement to Agricom.id.

Cassava, for instance, could be bought in the traditional markets for about Rp 5 thousand – Rp 10 thousand. "If it is processed to be mocaf flour, we could get the added value from the selling and make cassava better in class,” she said.

“The challenge is how many people consume the local food and should be up to date. How should we pack the local food within the taste of young generation. The local food could be advantaged to be the present products and advantage the local wisdom as well,” Arum mentioned.

Through Griya Pangan Arum Ayu, she regularly socialized, namely for the children, the youth, the females. In every chance of socialization, she hoped that she could change the people’s perspective, namely the young generation, about the local food. She and Koalisi Rakyat untuk Kedaulatan Pangan (KRKP) East Sumba also developed kinds of food and taste from the local food of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT). She changed sorghum and cassava to be kinds of delicious cakes and have added values. In Waingapu, East Sumba, sorghum is planted in the house yard of the local and no need to buy it. “We make the sorghum to be a delicious cake,” she mentioned.

The right technology usage and her knowledge make her successful to prove that the profession is promising one to get income. She could get the income up to Rp 50 million in a month. She told that in the pandemic, she increases her turnover drastically.

“In the pandemic, everyone wants to be healthy. The healthy life style is the option and our online selling increased 50%,” she said.

Aldi Prahasta (Chairman of Badan Eksekutif Mahasiwa, Politeknik Pembangunan Pertanian (Polbangtan), Bogor) as the source in the talkshow told that in Polbangtan, he and his friends do not learn about the way to do farming but also the way to process the agriculture harvest, such as, the local food. “Luckily in Polbangtan we got the capital, called, penumbuhan wirausaha muda pertanian. We got the money from the campus to develop the agriculture business,” he said.

“We do more practices up to 70% to the field. We were taught to pact the interesting product so that the people are fond of it,” he mentioned.

He continued that they got the facilities to innovate and make the processed food. He is optimist that there would be more young generations to do agriculture business namely in the food process.

Talking about business chance, coffee is one promising too and has big chance to develop. Afan Muharam, the owner of Side Coffee Roaster told so.

He said that coffee business in the pandemic like now is promising too. He thought that as long as the business has the value, no need to worry about others. “When starting the business, make sure that yours have differentiation, collaboration, and good networking,” he said.

He thought that the differentiation is important in business. How to start something different is by doing research. “By the research, we know our position, the segment we are heading and we could survive in the business,” he said.

Besides the research, the collaboration and networking are the important things to get thee network and distribution. “For you, my friends who want to do business, friends are essential namely for the coffee business. Try to make community. If it exists, they would search for it or in the other words, "word of mouth",” Afan said.

“When you have the community, the business would be better. For example, many rides bike now, make the bike café,” he explained.

The last which is important too is to increase the capability always. For example, if we do coffee business, the capability of the barista should be increased too.

“The barista should know the characteristic of coffee. For instance, when roasting the Gayo Aceh coffee, the boil level should be more than it in Javanese coffee. The education of the barista about coffee and the way to roast coffee are the knowledge to know more and more,” he said.

He also told that the coffee businessmen would be developing and the consumers would too. “If the coffee business is the start-up, they must have been more creative. They could touch the emotional sides of the drinkers,” he said.

In the previous, Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo said that, the agriculture is the promising sector when the economy gets decreasing because of Covid-19. It is known by the data from central bureau of statistic that the agriculture sector increased 2,19% in the second quarter of - 2020, when most of the other economic sectors got contraction. He told that the agriculture has strong durability in each crisis.

Meanwhile, Head of Public Relation and Information, Ministry of Agriculture, Kuntoro Boga Andri mentioned that the plantation sub sectors are the mainstays as the sources of exchange. In 2018 the coffee export, he continued, reached USD 815,9 million, or about 279,9 thousand tons.

"Coffee from Indonesia has high taste for Arabica and Robusta that other countries do not have. Coffee from Indonesia is claimed as the specialty. This is the benefit for the coffee from Indonesia in the international markets and we need to maintain and promote more intensively,” he said. (A2)