Sustainable Agricultural Systems Upstream of the Citarum Watershed: Social, Economic and Environmental Implications

Abstract

The Citarum watershed is Indonesia’s most degraded watershed. This is due to upstream agricultural practices that are harmful to the environment, such as the expansion of vegetable crops into steep areas and the destruction of forest areas. The upstream watershed’s management is critical to the overall watershed’s long-term viability. The purpose of this paper was to examine the characteristics of agriculture upstream of the Citarum watershed, as well as its social, economic, and environmental consequences. The participants in this study were 500 farmers from 22 villages in 14 sub-districts in the administrative areas of Bandung and West Bandung Regencies in Indonesia’s West Java Province. The following were the findings of a quantitative data analysis supplemented with qualitative data: 1. Farmers are typically productive adults with a low level of education (graduated from elementary school) who cultivate the main vegetable commodity using a combination of monoculture and intercropping techniques. 2. Due to financial constraints and a scarcity of land, farmers have been forced to cultivate state-owned forests and plantations using less environmentally friendly agricultural methods. 3. Farmers’ actions have an impact on critical land, river pollution, landslides that cause silting, and the Saguling reservoir’s lifespan. The key to implementing environmentally friendly agricultural practices in the short term is to structure agricultural practices with environmentally friendly technology. Furthermore, long-term sustainable solutions such as increasing human resource capacity, optimizing natural resource management, and utilizing social capital need to be addressed in the future.
 Keywords: scarcity of land, Citarum watershed, sustainable agriculture