Fenomena Penuaan Petani Dan Berkurangkanya Tenaga Kerja Muda Serta Implikasinya Bagi Kebijakan Pembangunan Pertanian

Abstract

Qualified human resources with a good commitment to develop agricultural sector is one of the determining factors toward sustainable agricultural development. However, agricultural development deals with significant issue especially reduction in the number of young farmers. This paper aims to review structural changes from perspective of aging farmer and declined number of young farmers in Indonesia and other countries. Specifically, this paper identifies various factors causing the changes and describes the policies needed to support young workers to enter agricultural sector. The method used in this paper is both descriptive analysis and cross tabulation. The results show that aging farmers and young farmers decline in Indonesia keep increasing. The phenomena are also found in other countries in Asia, Europe, America and Australia. Various factors causing lack interest of young workers in agricultural sector, namely less prestigious, high risk, less assurance, unstable earning. Other factors are small size land holding, limited non-agricultural diversification and agricultural processing activities in rural areas, slow farm management succession, and lack of incentive for young farmers. To attract youth to enter agricultural sector, it is necessary to transform youth\u27s perception that agricultural sector currently is interesting and promising. The government needs to development agricultural industry in rural areas, introduces technology innovation, offers special incentives for young farmers, modernizes agriculture, and conducts training and empowerment of young farmers