By: Frans Fredy Kalikit Bara.
The decreasing interest of young people in Indonesia to return to the village and plunge themselves into the real sector is one of the national issues discussed for a long time. Based on data from the Statistics Center in 2021 in terms of age, around 17,29% or 6,61 million are agricultural workers aged less than 30 years, then around 29,15% or 11,14 million people aged 30-44 years, then around 32,39% or as many as 12,38 million people aged between 45–59 years, and around 21,7% or 8,09 million people aged over 60 years. From the data above, it appears that the interest of the younger generation to love agriculture is still low. But there is an interesting thing, in Sumba the number of young people working in the agricultural sector is starting to increase. Starting with the number of 4 people, now it is increasing to 25 people within 2 years (2018-2020)
In a response to it, Stube HEMAT through a multiplication program facilitated a dialogue with the theme “Young people return to the village to build a village” which was held in Lambanapu (21/03/2022), starting at 09.00 until finished. Currently, villages demand youth intervention to manage village existing potencies. Young people are seen as a tough generation, have a progressive perspective on short-term and long-term development, creative and innovative. The main resource persons in this dialogue are Drs. Samsul Widodo, MA (expert staff for the ministry of relations between institutions of the Ministry of Villages, under-developed villages, and transmigration) and Yuli Sri Wilanti, S.Pi., M.P (assistant of the deputy for horticultural agribusiness development at the coordinating ministry for the economy and staff for the coordinating ministry for the economy).
The first speaker emphasized that Sumba's youth have a sense of concern for developing their village. The purpose of coming to Sumba besides field visiting as a form of initial observation and finding solutions to support village development, it finds local heroes as well. A local hero is a young person who is actively trying to make changes in the village. The results of these actions will be used as models or examples for short of village development. Yuli Sri Wilanti, the second resource person, focused more on seeing whether the central government's programs had been optimally realized in the field or not, as well as coordinating existing programs. "Talking about agriculture means that we have to go out to the field and observe to give special attention, especially NTT province," she said.
The atmosphere of the discussion in this dialogue was quite lively and filled with interesting questions, some of the participants asked about agricultural tools, seed and fertilizer assistance, or the system of cropping patterns. Something was interesting when one of them expressed gratitude for the Seroja disaster in April 2021 because farmers switched professions from rice farming to horticulture farming. After all, it turned out that horticulture farming is to be more profitable. The participants who attended the meeting consisted of Unkriswina students majoring in Agrotechnology and Agribusiness, Kambera district Head, Lambanapu Village Head, Head of BP3K Lambanapu, PPL, Director of Caritas Waitabula, community leaders, and members of Panah Merah farmer of Sumba Farmers. Hopefully, from this dialogue, more young people will love the world of agriculture, they are willing to return to the village and be agents of change and local heroes having a positive influence to the region, the environment, and society. ***