Abstract
Farmer group institutions have been being a target group for various innovations in the agricultural development program. Unfortunately, the aspect of their institutional system is getting ignored frequently. This study aimed to know the farmer group institution performance’s determinant factors and its effect on the agricultural innovation implementation sustainability. This was a longitudinal study using a qualitative approach involving ten farmer group institutions (mixed crop-livestock farming) done in Lombok island. The study showed that farmer groups with a good institutional system relatively performed a high level of sustainable innovation implementation in comparison with the group with a poor institutional system. There were four key factors affected the performance and the farmer group institution’s achievement: (1) strong leadership; (2) transparency; (3) regular group meeting; (4) and cash generating factor. The study also showed that farmer group institution which didn’t have those key factors tended to use the farmer group institution only to complete their physical need (impounded cows for security reason). It rarely uses to empower its group members. These conditions slowly could be developed as an individualistic treat on each group member that prevents the sustainable innovation implementation in the future. The agricultural innovation on this type of group usually only implemented in a short amount of time. Therefore, guidance for a good institutional system in a farmer group institution is required to be conducted to achieve a sustainable and comprehensive agricultural innovation implementation. Some strategies could be used to develop the four key factors to form a good institutional system in the farmer group institution.
Highlights
Farmer group institutions have been being various national agricultural development programs target
This study showed that farmer group institution with a low level of performance was not having a regular meeting and a low level of technology adoption
A good institutional system in a farmer group institution is an important key to create a sustainable impact on the agricultural field
Summary
Farmer group institutions have been being various national agricultural development programs target. The possible improvement of farmer skill after participating in the program which would be reduced the poverty prevalence in the rural area at the end of the program is the major reason of the selection of the farmer group institution as the target in the national agricultural development program (Dilts, 1999: 36-37). The majority of the farmer group institutions were only activated during the implementation of the agricultural or an aid program. This type of top-down group approach have criticized to be not effective and efficient because of four main reasons: (1) government limited capacity in reaching some isolated area, (2) top-down type only providing new facilities but not preparing efforts to maintain and sustain the group capability in continuing the implementation of a program, (3) the program was designed by Indonesia’s policymakers who possibly had limited knowledge and information about the specific need in some agricultural area and (4) create a dependency cycle because most of the program was designed only to complete its goals but not trying to create a resilient farmer group institutions (Korten, 1983 p. 181-183; Hoffmann, Probst, & Christinck, 2007)
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