Influences of farmer group institution on agricultural land use change in ciwidey agropolitan area, bandung regency, west java

Abstract

In the cycle of human development, as technology advances, human will progress to the more efficient economy. Thus, primary economic activities like agriculture would slowly reduce in number and shifted into secondary and tertiary activities. The Ciwidey Agropolitan Area is a region which currently being developed as an agriculture-focused economy which also undergoes an agricultural tourism development as its complement and new form of secondary and tertiary economic activities. The region had long serving agricultural activity and agricultural institutions with a form of farmer groups with various horticulture products since 1979. While the land use change here occurs from various conditions, the institutions which had a strong relation to land could affect the land use activities. Looking at its role both as an agropolitan center and agrotourism destination, it is interesting to understand how the farmer groups system in the region, tightly related to the land and how it might affect the agricultural land use. The research aims to understand how farmer groups affect agricultural land uses. By using a spatial-qualitative approach which rely on verbatim data, the study concluded that the farming group had a tendency to produce a resistance activities against land use change. As more effective systems and rules implemented in a farming group, its agricultural land vulnerability would also be lower. Thus, the agricultural land vulnerability pattern follows the condition and effectivity of related area’s farmer group.