Dieng Farmers' Superior Potato Seeds and Gunung Kidul Farmers' Rice Business

Rukun Tani Indonesia (RTI) is a farmer organization that was established in 2010 in Sleman, Yogyakarta. Currently, RTI assists farmers in two main locations, namely the Dieng Plateau and Gunung Kidul. In Dieng, farmers focus on potatoes, while in Gunung Kidul farmers manage land for rice. These two areas face different difficulties: Dieng farmers have difficulty obtaining quality potato seeds, while Gunung Kidul farmers need to strengthen production.

Two challenges were solved by RTI with the support of the Nusantara Fund Direct Funding. The flexibility of the Nusantara Fund Direct Funding allows communities to develop solutions that are tailored to their specific needs or problems. Flexibility ensures that each direct funding is truly appropriate and brings benefits to the community.

Potato farmers in the Dieng Plateau, one of the main bases for RTI assistance, have difficulty obtaining superior seeds in large quantities in a short time. So far, they have used tubers, a method that has many disadvantages: high costs, susceptibility to disease, and the risk of spreading bacteria. As a result, the harvest is not optimal and production costs are often higher than the results, resulting in losses.

To overcome this problem, RTI provides tissue culture training to produce healthy and virus-free mini potato cuttings. This technique uses young stems from tissue culture planted in sterile media in a greenhouse. The planting media is organic, derived from coconut fiber, enriched with microorganisms such as Trichoderma, and sterilized to be virus-free.

The advantages of tissue culture are that plants can be propagated at any time regardless of the season because it is done in a closed room, the multiplication power is high, the plants produced are uniform, and free from diseases especially bacteria and fungi and free from viruses (Sakya et al., 2002). Production costs are also much lower because it does not require large tubers for propagation, just cuttings from the parent plant.

Together with farmers, RTI also built a special greenhouse that meets the standards of the Seed Supervision and Certification Center (BPSB). The greenhouse can accommodate 2000 mini cuttings that will produce 15.000 zero-generation virus-free potato seeds (never been planted). The potato seeds will be planted on 1 hectare of land, which is projected to be able to produce 16 tons of potatoes and 4 tons of seeds. In addition, a seed cooperative was formed to ensure Dieng Farmers' continued access to quality potato seeds at affordable prices. 

In addition to supporting farmers in Dieng, RTI also assists 100 heads of families of glutinous rice and red rice farmers in Gunung Kidul. The agricultural production pattern of most farmers in the region is a subsistence system. They only grow for their own and family consumption, so RTI's focus is to ensure that assisted farmers have enough food before entering into the sale of their harvest.

RTI encourages farmers to develop their farming businesses gradually. One of the initial steps is to provide business capital of Rp2 million and provide rice packaging equipment, such as vacuum machines and sack sewing machines. In addition, farmers are assisted in preparing business plans and building mechanisms for managing sticky rice and red rice to be more sustainable. With this approach, RTI not only helps farmers increase productivity, but also opens up opportunities for developing rice businesses.