KPSP Saluyu is a dairy cooperative in Indonesia which participated in the Kick-Off Workshop for youth participation in Malang, East Java in October 2019. After the event, Saluyu formally formed their youth council with the following purposes:
To be a channel for young members’ opinions & efforts
To attract more young farmers to the cooperative
The newly-formed youth council faced several challenges in the early days of their formation:
Young farmers were hesitant to speak up & take initiatives, mainly because of local culture where young people are expected to be respectful and sometimes obedient to seniors.
As the concept of a Youth Council is new to Saluyu, they are still learning to arrange budgets & programs for youth activities.
In the early stage of the establishment of the youth council, the cooperative started to invite a youth delegation in every board meeting. The young farmers also started to gather regularly, developed activities and achieved some great successes already.
One of these successes was visible at the General Assembly Meeting of the cooperative in February 2020. During this meeting, the former head of the Youth Council, Mr. Ajat, was elected to be the Chairman of the cooperative’s Supervisory Board (2021 – 2025). This was a major milestone for youth development efforts in Saluyu, because the election indicated that farmers fully recognized the potential and value of increasing youth participation.
In the meantime, the youth of Saluyu were active in different projects:
Calf Rearing Program
One of the challenges faced by dairy farmers in the area is difficulty to get high-quality & traceable calves. Farmers often end up with calves in poor health condition, low productivity potential, and prone to diseases. To tackle this problem, Youth Council and senior board members initiated a rearing program in December 2019 to produce high quality calves to be sold to other members. Young farmers act as the executors, breeding and raising high quality calves in their farm. This practice is done in high standard and monitored by senior board members.
Manure Management
Since a month after the youth kick off training, KAN Muda has come into action by renting a land of 1.2 hectare for manure collection point as a pilot project for five years, since October 2019.
Following their assessment on manure project, Agriterra set up a mission to help them arrange a proper manure management system, that was conducted last month with Agripool expert Rob Berkers from Rabo Partnerships. They agree to continue this project, to have at least five manure collection points in each village to do composting (nutrient cycle).
We start with twelve young dairy farmers last year, now we have more farmers want to join this project. At least, 30 young farmers were participated in the last assignment on manure management.
Responding to the Fodder Crisis
The Covid-19 breakout has caused fodder crisis in Kuningan regency, West Java. The Youth Council of KPSP Saluyu has been working with the cooperative management & senior board members to mitigate the crisis by setting up corn silage production system. The cooperative has now successfully contracted local corn farmers and purchased land, buildings and equipment with a production capacity of 2 – 4 tons/day (versus the total members’ demand of 50 – 60 tons/day).The goal for this year is to set up a large-scale corn silage factory. By consistently providing members with high-quality fodder, the overall cattle health can be improved.
Now the silage program is in the implementation phase, Saluyu discovered several weaknesses in current members’ farming practices like:
Inconsistent feeding
Little to no attention about fodders’ nutritional balance
Usage of low quality fodders (cassava husk, tofu curd, paddy stalks)
Those practices are the main cause of low milk productivity. The current produce is around 10 liters per cow per day, compared to local optimal rate of 18 – 20 liter per cow per day.
Increasing quality and volume of corn silage production is not enough to increase overall milk production. The cooperative also need to arrange a monitoring program to change farmers’ feeding habit. In this effort, young farmers stand in the front line by participating in the cooperative’s monitoring program in order to become role-models for farmers in the area.
Agriterra will help them to calculate the investment that is needed to turn this pilot project into a service and business unit from the cooperative.
Experts on cow nutrition and feed production are sharing their knowledge with the coop