The Yogyakarta City Government seeks to develop an urban agriculture program that is initiated in the form of a vegetable village or aisle, one of which is by packaging it in a creative economy. “Land used for urban agriculture is very limited, usually only yards in front of houses and even residential alleys. Therefore, it needs to be packaged as a creative economy in order to produce optimal results," said Head of the Food Security Division of the Yogyakarta City Agriculture and Food Service, Imam Nurwahid in Yogyakarta, Monday. According to him, the creative economy in the development of the vegetable village will allow managers to continue to innovate so that the vegetable village will continue to run sustainably and provide a more optimal impact on the community from various sides. "Not only in terms of fulfilling food security, but also improving the community's economy," he said. The implementation of the policy "from Yogyakarta to Yogyakarta", he continued, could also be a support for maintaining the sustainability of the vegetable village management. “Every vegetable village or farmer group certainly has superior products. Each product can be rotated among farmer groups to meet each other's needs,” he said. He also gave an example, a number of farmer groups are able to produce planting media, even the local government has also tried to build a seed house even though it is simple.
In addition, there are also farmer groups that can process organic waste to produce liquid fertilizer. "If each group can meet the needs of other groups, then the production produced by the vegetable village will be automatically absorbed," he said. However, Imam also said that local government intervention is still needed to maintain continuity of activities in each vegetable village, especially those under the guidance of the regional government. “The trick is to buy products produced by the vegetable village. Able to work together with culinary groups that enter the Gandeng Carry program. Culinary groups buy ingredients from vegetable village products," he said. Thus, continued Imam, the manager of the vegetable village in the city of Yogyakarta can be more enthusiastic to keep the vegetable village they manage can run sustainably. Based on the survey results, Imam said, there are several marketing models for Kampung Vegetable products, namely donations or giving to posyandu and housewives around Kampung Vegetable. In addition, there are also vegetable villages that sell products with a varied buying and selling system, for example, they are sold to the community or nearby stalls to ensure that capital turnover is maintained. "There are also products that have been sold to the market manually or online," he said. Currently, there are a total of 115 vegetable villages in the city of Yogyakarta and Imam said that not all of them are running optimally due to various reasons, including the weather or managers who are busy with other activities.
