Embracing the Earth Community: The Stakes of Land Rights and Food Sovereignty on the Sultanate's Lands

Merangkul Bumi Community is a local community group that focuses on efforts to protect and strengthen community management rights over land in the Gunung Kidul Regency area, Yogyakarta. The Merangkul Bumi Community, whose members are mostly farmers, realizes the importance of clear rights to the land they manage. As part of an effort to strengthen their movement, the Merangkul Bumi Community, with the support of the Nusantara Fund Direct Funding, launched a participatory mapping program and strengthening community capacity in managing managed areas.

The program is run by the Embracing the Earth Community with assistance WALHI Yogyakarta includes land mapping, karst land management education, and infrastructure development for agricultural product distribution. Mapping activities involve community members directly in the participatory mapping process, the Merangkul Bumi Community measures and documents the land that they have historically managed for a long time. The main goal is to produce a People's Management Area Map that can be proposed as a basis for obtaining a letter of ownership from Panitikismo - an institution under the Yogyakarta Sultanate that manages the sultanate's land -. Through this initiative, the community also develops a long-term strategy to maintain control over the land from land conversion for commercial purposes.

In the initial stage, the community successfully published the results of participatory mapping, namely the 17,2 hectares of sultanate land that had been managed by the community was successfully mapped. This land is under the status of Sultan Ground or Sultanate Land, and is currently being proposed as community managed land. This participatory mapping initiative is part of a larger effort, especially the need for access to productive land for food sovereignty in Gunung Kidul Regency.

The Merangkul Bumi Community has proposed a management permit for 17,2 hectares of mapped land to Panitikismo to be managed by the community. With the management permit, the community can focus its energy on optimizing land productivity for various productive agricultural activities in building community resilience based on local resources.

Special land management education for karst areas is also provided to members of the Merangkul Bumi Community. They gain new skills in sustainable agricultural techniques that are suitable for the characteristics of karst soil that is difficult to water and prone to soil degradation. Members who previously only planted legumes have now succeeded in cultivating rice on shared land. Rice has a higher economic value and can also be an option for diversifying community food needs. The results of the education contribute to increased land productivity and increased income.

In addition, the Merangkul Bumi Community also built a kiosk that functions as a place to store and distribute production results. This kiosk not only extends the shelf life of the harvest, but also makes it easier for the community to access the market without worrying about the risk of product damage. With the kiosk, the distribution of agricultural products to urban areas can be done more effectively, which in turn will increase farmers' incomes and can support the economic stability of the community as a whole.

The Embracing the Earth Community reminds us of the importance of building community resilience with adaptation based on local potential. The resulting participatory mapping is a supporting document for the proposal to recognize management rights in the Sultanate Land, while karst land training provides technical skills in managing karst land, and the construction of kiosks creates a more efficient agricultural product distribution system.