Tropentag 2022, September 14 - 16, Prague, Germany "Can agroecological farming feed the world? Farmers' and academia's views."

Institutional innovation for improving food security based on agroecological integrated farming in developing countries: Evidence from Indonesia

¹University of Mataram, Fac. of Animal Science, Indonesia
²University of New England, Science, Agriculture, Business and Law, Australia

Abstract

Food insecurity is main challenge, not only in Indonesia, but also in the rest of the developing world, and has become more serious in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and impacts of the climate change-induced risks. The recent Global Food Security Index (2022) indicated that Indonesia's food security decreased in 2021 from the previous year. There are concerns that the lack of appropriate government policies are some of the main contributing factors to decline of food security performance. It is believed that institutional innovations at the grass root and local levels are strategies to improve food security. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the deliverable outcomes of the collaborative research between the Livestock Development and Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture, and University of Mataram (Indonesia) in collaboration with the University of New England (Australia) which is supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) on changing of local government organisations in increasing livestock production based on integrated agriculture (aka Crop-Cow). The perceptions of farmers and key stakeholders, along with other qualitative indicators, were collected using in-depth key informant interviews and focus group discussions in six districts in the province of West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Research findings showed that the institutional innovations implemented by collaborative work have encouraged increasing capacity and changing the ways of working of government staff in establishing work plans and local policies to increase food production of Crop-Cow integrated farming in line with national food security policies. Our results highlight the need to develop and implement an institutional innovation focused on local government organisations to advocate policy changes for improving food security governance based on local agroecological conditions focused on poor farmers in order to ensure that ‘no one is left behind’ in the quest towards ‘zero to hunger’.

Keywords: Agroecological, food security, innovation, institution, integrated farming

Contact Address: Mohammad Taqiuddin, University of Mataram, Fac. of Animal Science, Socio-economic Laboratory, Jl. Majapahit 62, - Mataram, Indonesia, e-mail: mohtaqhieyahoo.com