Empowerment of Sederhana Farmer Groups Through the Use of Organic Pelet Fertilizer on Chili Plants on Coastal Land

¹ Departement of Agribussines, Faculty of Agriculture, 55183 Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Indonesia
² Departement of Agrotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, 55183 Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: susanawati@umy.ac.id

Abstract

The problem is that coastal land has different characteristics from rice fields, so the organic fertilizer used must be appropriate. Alternative solutions offered to overcome this problem include counseling and FGD on organic fertilizer in the form of pellets and how to make it. Another solution is training and demonstrations on the introduction of pellet printing machine technology, as well as its application to chili plantson sandy land and analysis of farming. The output target of this program is increasing partners’ knowledge and skills as a result of outreach, training and demonstrations. The method or activity plan proposed to achieve thistarget is Focus Group Discussion carried out by gathering strategic target audiences, namely simple farmer groups to take part in counseling, lectures and discussions. Demonstrations on making organic pellet fertilizer and its application on chili plants through demonstration plot. Analysis of coastal land chili farming using organic pellet fertilizer. There are 18% of farmers whose change in knowledge is in the high category, 55% of farmers are in the medium category, and 27% are in the low category. The demonstration plot results showed that by using organic pellet fertilizer around 12% of chili plants died. Meanwhile, chili plants planted conventionally without using organic pellet fertilizer resulted in the number of chili plants dying as much as 30%.