Description

Summary: Agriculture is the most common activity practiced by rural farmers. Lack of market information, remote location and poor accessibility to production resources are common problems faced by the farmers. The marketing activities over the past six months focused to address the limitation of VAF’s farmers on market information. As a first stage, market surveys were conducted to identify market opportunities for selected VAFs. It is important for farmers to know for which product there is a demand, which quantities and qualities are in demand, when and where there is a demand and at what price.

Rapid Market Appraisal (RMA) is a method used to collect market information in short period of time for a specific purpose. The method helps provide a quick understand of complex market relationships to guide the producer make decisions regarding the orientating their production towards market opportunities. Focus Group Discussion (FGD) is an information collection/sharing tool used to identify farmer s preference in VAF development and select the most marketable VAF. A literature review was conducted to complement and enrich the research findings.

Nanggung s farmers do not have competitive advantage in producing vegetables. They also have little experience to producing vegetables under Agroforestry system. It was a challenge for the team to recommend best practice VAF management as well as to motivate the farmers to develop vegetable agroforestry production systems in Nanggung. Using the previous RMA results augmented by additional species specific vegetable market information, we recommended the farmers to develop Katuk and Kucai as prospective and marketable vegetables. These vegetables require low capital investment, can be grow under the shading (20-25% for Katuk), and promise good return for the farmers. In efforts to enhance farmer s knowledge and skills, the project is targeting VAF production and marketing activities for the next 6 months. Production demonstration plots have been established in three selected villages. Commercially oriented, production and profitability data from the plots will be evaluated and disseminated for broader farmer s adoption. Comparative studies have been conducted through visits to successful Katuk and Kucai s farmers in two neighboring villages. Those field visit enhanced farmer s knowledge regarding VAF production/marketing and motivation to participate in project activities. The project has distributed 60,000 of Katuk s seedlings (stem cuttings) and about 150 kg of Kucai s seeds to farmer partners in Parakan Muncang, Hambaro and Sukaluyu villages. To ensure market acceptability of the products, we have facilitated collaboration between farmers and a local trader. The trader will buy all vegetable yields that meet the market standard at an agreed price. For now, farmers will follow existing marketing channel as a strategy to penetrate the market and collect in-depth market information to improve and innovate the marketing decision in the future.