The Agribusiness Student Association of the Faculty of Agriculture, Unisma, offers solutions about food security in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic through the program of residents’ house yard optimization accompanied by technological innovations in vegetable and fish cultivation in a bucket and the application of verticulture.
Taking place in neighborhood 11, Merjosari Village, Malang City, Dr. Dwi Susilowati, SP., MP, the supervising lecturer with a team of 15 students, has a priority program to improve farmer skills by optimizing house yards.
“Alhamdulillah (Thank God), two Unisma student organizations passed the funding for the 2020 PHP2D program from the Ministry of Education and Culture. One of them is through the innovation of vegetable and fish cultivation technology in buckets as well as the development of farming with the verticultural system, “said Dr. Dwi Susilowati.
Furthermore, she also conveyed that this student program also seeks to improve the skills of farmer group members by optimizing the potential of home yards. This aims to support the food security of the community especially in response to the pandemic period.
The head of the team for this program, Siti Ulin Nafiqoh, added that they were trying to offer food self-sufficiency solutions through promoting vegetable cultivation as well as fish farming in a bucket and farming accompanied by agribusiness management and online market development. Thus food security can be realized immediately and run continuously.
“We are trying to optimize the residents’ yards in order to create food independence. Moreover, it is the demand for independence during the pandemic especially in the red zone, which was imposed during the Large-Scale Social Restrictions, “said Nafiqoh.
Nafiqoh admitted that the team of Agribusiness students from Unisma tried to apply the knowledge they had learned from campus which includes educating farmer groups for abundant and good quality crops and boosting food commodities in order to increase household income.
