Community Empowerment Model through Regional Partnership Program and Agro Techno Park Initiative

Abstract

The income of horticultural farmers in Purwosari Sub-District, Mijen District, Semarang City, has been stagnant for over the years. This has been caused by languid institutional systems at the farm level, limited human resources, lack of supporting infrastructure and crop-processing technology, and inadequacy of small medium enterprises that directly engaged in processing. To handle these issues, there has been an initiative to establish Argo Tekno Park as a center for transferring agricultural technology through the development of eduagro-tourism and horticulture-based entrepreneurship. In achieving the objective, various and continuous activities have been carried out with a multi-stakeholder business partnership model that includes elements of the Semarang City Agriculture Service (Dinas Pertanian Kota Semarang), Semarang State University and the University of PGRI Semarang, Farmer Groups (Kelompok Tani) and OborTani Foundation. The program is executed through infrastructure development, Field Schools (Sekolah Lapang), capacity building and mentoring of tour guides, and devising a new entrepreneurship program based on horticulture. The results of the activity show, first: the partnership between academics, private sector, community, and government is quite effective proven with the initiation of Argo Techno Park; second, the production of durian, longan, guava, melon and passion fruit has been growing by more than 100%; third, organizing Wanita Tani Joint Business Group (Kelompok Usaha Bersama), which increases income. Due to the complexity of the bureaucratic process, this research recommends that the pertinent agencies can facilitate the legal aspect of KUB's end product.