ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS FEASIBILITY OF CASSAVA CHIPS AND CASSAVA TAPE, FINANCING AND MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL CASSAVA FARMERS IN JEMBER REGENCY

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:For businesses of all sizes, small businesses, micro or medium-sized enterprises , especially in agriculture and agribusiness sector, being stagnated in an effort certainly is something unwanted and undesirable. Of course, every farmer and entrepreneur in the field of agribusiness always want to progress in business from time to time. But stagnation sometimes venture into something else that can not be avoided, even sometimes had to retreat several stages. Many things can affect business conditions of farmers and entrepreneurs in the field of agribusiness, which current scenario changed to sluggish markets, stiff competition, declining productivity, rising production costs and others (Bank Indonesia :2006)In mid - 2000s appeared a variety of inovative products made from raw cassava that is ranging from just chips' are packaged until brownies' made from cassava tape. The cassava chips was called maichi' which was grounded in 2011's until now. The maichi chips was processed properly using a spicy taste and attractive packaging and combined with innovative ideas, it can be excellent product accepted by the public (Bank Indonesia: 2010)Regency of Jember is known as one of largest producers and the biggest marketing area of cassava products especially tape and suwar suwir. Various types of processed cassava can be found in Jember such as cassava chips, cassava tape, proll tape, suwar-shredded to brownies tape. (Dinas Koperasi dan UMKM:2015)How to make the efforts of farmers and entrepreneurs in the field of agribusiness always progressing and receding back of productivity loss and competition?. Once the business plan has been made by either businessman or farmer, there is a need to do an evaluation and monitor the efforts. To evaluate the progress of the business is a process that is ongoing and continuous. Evaluation of the activities set out in the process of monitoring each business carried on, the results of the monitoring can be made analysis of progress, setbacks and achievements of what has been implemented. Evaluation and monitoring for an entrepreneur as well as a means of learning and self-upgrade process. It can be found in the process of new things and new strategies achieve business success. (Nainggolan: 2012)The purpose of the evaluation of the feasibility effort is an attempt to determine the extent of the successful implementation of the project, whether the project is running according to plan and will provide the expected results. According to Umar (2003) there are some application when the feasiblity is evaluated namely: (1) guide the owner of the funds to optimize the use of its own funds; and (2) minimize the risk of investment failure and (3) can increase the chances of success of the investment in question. A survey was conducted by researchers (Roziq, Ahmad, Nur Hisamuddin, Nining IkaWahyuni & Indah Purnamawati :2013) among cassava farmers in the district of Pakusari, Jember Regency, East Java, Indonesia found that problems faced by cassava farmers were disease of caterpillars squash, lack of capital funds, difficulty of selling, poor quality of cassava during the rainy season, low price of cassava at high yields contemporary agricultural practices with no innovation and difficulty of access to bank credit. Results of the study advised that farmers should develop cassava production into food processing such as cassava tape and cassava chips in order to earn more income.Based on the explanations above, the problem to be studied particularly concerned with how to know and analyze the business feasibility of cassava chips and cassava tape; financing marketing strategy of the business of cassava chips and cassava tape for entrepreneurial cassava farmers.THEORITICAL REVIEW:According to Umar (2003), various stages of feasibility evaluation consists of:a. Analysis of Market Aspects:Evaluation of the market aspects is very important because a business object can not be successful in the absence of demand for the goods / services produced by the project. …