Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
This study examines the willingness of young people to become farmers, typically by analyzing their intention to work in the agriculture sector. The study is based on primary data using questionnaires distributed online to 200 respondents. The descriptive analysis, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis's rank were used to assess demographic factors associated with their willingness to be farmers. Only 26.5% of the total respondents wanted to make agriculture their main livelihood, 46% were still hesitant or may change their minds about working as a farmer, and 27.5% firmly refused to be a farmer. Research that raises the issue of young people's perspectives on the agricultural sector is still rare in Indonesia. Although Indonesia is an agricultural nation, the interest of the younger generation in becoming farmers is rapidly declining. This poses a unique challenge for the government in developing policies to encourage the younger generation to work in agriculture, where Indonesia needs them to continue developing the agricultural sector. Although the aforementioned factors may be predators of low youth participation, this study believes that the awareness and willingness of these youths to participate in agriculture are primary concerns that must be addressed before external factors established in previous studies can be properly resolved.
Keywords: Agriculture Sector, Young Generation, Willingness to Farm.
1. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is one of the sectors expected to support the Indonesian economy because it can absorb a significant workforce, namely 34 percent of the Indonesian population. However, this number has been declining yearly for the last ten years (BPS, 2016). This decline has influenced national GDP; the agricultural sector contributed 13.28 percent to GDP in 2021, a figure expected to fall compared to the previous year, which reached 13.7 percent (BPS, 2021).
The government's policy of encouraging the agricultural sector by assisting in the provision of working capital is expected to improve the agricultural sector, while also encouraging equity and economic growth, particularly in rural areas. However, farmers' welfare continues to deteriorate; according to BPS data, the exchange rate of farmers in 23 provinces is lower than the national average (BPS, 2021). This indicates that farmers' earnings from selling agricultural products are insufficient to cover production costs while financing household consumption. As a result, they have only three options for covering the...