Sweet potato agribusiness development strategy to improve farmers’ income

Abstract

Sustainable agricultural commodity production is determined by the conducive policy implemented by both central and local governments as well as the stakeholders. To meet domestic and export demands it is necessary to conduct agribusiness development strategy for farmers’ income improvement, i.e. investment climate upgrading. Enhancing export opportunity of sweet potato products has large opportunity, but domestic production is still limited. This paper aims to analyze agribusiness strategy for export purpose. Specific purposes of this paper are: (i) to analyze sweet potato domestic production, (ii) to evaluate sweet potato processing and marketing, and (iii) to assess partnership between sweet potato farmers and processors. The study was conducted in East Java. The research results show that sweet potato production expansion is due to export-oriented partnership resulting in farmers’ income enhancement. It is urgent to increase sweet potato production based on good agricultural practices (GAP) to meet export market demand in terms of quantity and quality.