Z

ainal Arifin, a student at Panca Bhakti University in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, who comes from the remote regency of Bengkayang, which shares a border with Malaysia, has made up his mind that working in the agricultural sector is the right choice for his future livelihood.

He said he did not care about people’s perceptions that being a farmer was not as prestigious as being a civil servant.

“I don’t want to be a civil servant. Instead, I want to work in agriculture to implement the knowledge I have gained about new ways [of farming], which utilize technology,” Zainal told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

His parents grow rubber, pepper and vegetables such as tomatoes, chilies and beans. Pepper and vegetables, he said, were easy to sell in Malaysia, which was not far from his village of Sanggau Ledo.

Novita Elvinia, a student of Pontianak’s Tanjungpura University, shares a similar dream, and wants to run her own agricultural business.

“Not many [farmers in remote villages] are aware of the importance of diversification of commodities to increase their income,” said Novita who hails from Semanget subdistrict near the Malaysian border point of Entikong in Sanggau regency.

She said farmers in her village were also too dependent on the prices of Malaysian products because they were often much cheaper than that of local products. A kilogram of Malaysian sugar, for example, sells for RM 2.80 (66 US cents), while the price tag of the local product can reach Rp 14,000 (US1.1) per kilogram.

Zainal and Novita were among the audience members of a presentation by Mark Smulders, a Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations (FAO) representative for Indonesia and Timor-Leste, who spoke during a seminar in Pontianak in commemoration of World Food Day.

Smulders said the increasing urbanization rate could increase the vulnerability of food security as less and less farmers were producing food in rural villages.

Youths, especially those living in border areas, therefore, needed to be encouraged to develop agricultural-based businesses, he said.

“We have to attract young people to farming by using technology and applications to access the market. There are so many opportunities in Indonesia. We want to avoid migration. Young people are the future,” he said.

He encouraged West Kalimantan to learn from the success stories of other provinces, such as the conservation-based approaches to agriculture in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, which have involved local youths.

Smulders said more people needed to live in rural areas to produce food if Indonesia wanted to become one of the world’s food production centers.

The dean of Tanjungpura University’s School of Agriculture, Radian, said that West Kalimantan had 500,000 hectares of agricultural fields, producing around 1.5 million tons of rice per year.

However, the region’s rice productivity is considered low, at only 2.9 tons per hectare, while the national average is 4.3 tons per hectare.

“The youth need to be persuaded that agriculture is a beautiful pursuit. The fact this province shares a border with Malaysia makes it promising in terms of export opportunities,” he said.

Five out of 14 regencies and cities in West Kalimantan share a border with Sarawak, Malaysia, namely Sanggau, Bengkayang, Sambas, Sintang and Kapuas Hulu.

Head of the Agriculture Ministry’s food security agency, Agung Hendriardi, said manpower in the agricultural sector had been steadily decreasing since 2010. There were 42.8 million people working in the sector in 2010. This year, the figure has dropped to 39.7 million.

“The younger generation also needs to be motivated through the promotion of local wisdoms according to the characteristics of their respective regions,” Agung said.