The urban’s food security is an important thing to realize at this COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on the limitation and the disturbance by the government’s policy (PSBB) that the food suppliers who mostly live in the village are getting more difficult to be reached.
The urban citizens are starting to realize the importance of consuming healthy cultivated crops. It later encourages the Kricak’s locals to create a farmer association called ‘Ngremboko’. The association has been established since 2015 and produces a program that utilizes the narrow and empty space of the people as cultivation land. This program is called Vegetable Village (Kampung Sayur) and Vegetable Alley (Lorong Sayur).
Interestingly, this program seems to be more active since the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March 2020, the farmer association “Ngremboko” intensively cultivates various vegetables whose product could be beneficial for the members. Moreover, they also cultivate in a group of 750m2 village’s land. The harvest was done successfully on Monday, 10th August 2020, and was attended by the Vice Mayor of Yogyakarta, Drs. Heroe Poerwadi, MA.
The PIAT’s Chief (right), Vice Mayor of Yogyakarta (middle), Tegalrejo Chief (hijab), and The Leader of Farmer Association “Ngremboko” (left) about the benefit of vegetables for health.
The farmer association showed their enthusiasm, thus encouraging PIAT-UGM to collaborate with the Yogyakarta Regional Government especially the Agriculture and Food Safety Service to provide accompaniment and seeds for the farmers. Moreover, the university had given the mandate for managing the tropical veggies genetic bank. Hence, PIAT UGM would be ready to collaborate with the government to realize “Jogja as The Vegetable City”.
“I am really glad to see directly the cultivation process which is done by Yogyakarta’s citizens. Since 2015, several Yogyakarta farmer associations have been multiplied,” said Drs. Heroe Poerwadi, MA when attending the harvest. He elaborated on the concept that would be carried on the development of Yogyakarta’s Urban Cultivation Land. This land would be called as “Lumbung Mataraman”, it also has slogan “Mangan sing ditandur, nandur sing arep dipangan” which is translated as “plant what you eat, and eat what you plant”. This slogan was created to carry out the nature of vegetables, healthy, nutritious, easy to cultivate, and to prevent several diseases.
At that moment, Drs. Heroe Poerwadi, MA also appealed to the people who have empty space for utilizing it to cultivate vegetables. “I hope that this group cultivation would be continued with the local’s collaboration so that the activity could be a tool for silaturahmi,” he said.