Cool … Students of IPB Taught Farmers to Solve the Problems with Statistics
Gabungan Kelompok Tani / Combined Farmer Group (Gapoktan) played an important role in the decision-making and the policies related to the agricultural issues to improve the economies of scale and the business efficiency. The policies taken should be based on the agreement and the condition in the field that could be seen from the data collected by the farmers.
Pradia Charismaharani, the student of Department of Statistics, Bogor Agricultural University, along with the team of PKMM (Student Creativity Program of Community Services) namely Ani Safitri, Fidya Aimatami, Sumayasri Aji Noor Widyatmoko, and Akhbamah Primadaniyah Febrin observed the combined farmer group named Gapoktan Saluyu located in Neglasari Village, Darmaga Sub-district, Bogor District.
Based on the result of the team interview with the Chairman of Gapoktan Saluyu, it was known that Gapoktan Saluyu was a combination of three groups of farmers with 15 active members. The main commodities produced by Gapoktan were palawija, such as nuts, sweet potatoes, and cassava. The Gapoktan still had various problems such as the decreasing of the intensity of meetings between the members and the board, the lack of the regeneration of the board, the production that was still by the traditional method, the capital management problems, and the absence of the data on the agricultural development, so that it hindered the development of the farming.
The complete and neat data were not only useful in the decision making, the farmers could also know the development of the farming independently. Therefore, Pradia and her friends of PKMM initiated a program called Eksis, Edukasi Berbasis Statistik: Peningkatan Kinerja Gabungan Kelompok Tani Yang Berorientasi Pada Early Warning System Dan Decision Based / Education Based on Statistics: Increase of the Performance of Combined Farmer Group Oriented on the Early Warning System and Decision Based”.
“The Program of “Eksis” is conducted to help Gapoktan Saluyu in solving the agricultural problems through the data collected by the farmers. The program also educates the farmers about the importance of the data, how to collect the data, tidying up the data, and how to read the data development through the graphs, so that the development of the data can be analyzed easily,” said Pradia.
The statistical approach was the data problem solution. Through the simple statistical learning, it was expected to help Gapoktan Saluyu and the farmers collected the complete and accurate data. The collected data were then organized systematically through I-Book. The data were then entered into a simple Ms. Excel based application that was automatically displaying the graph. The graphics also allowed the user to read the progress of data, so that Gapoktan and the agents of the agricultural extension could work together to analyze data that could then be used as the decision based and the prediction of an event.
The implementation method of PKMM Eksis was Sidak (Socialization, Education, and Action). Socialization was the first step in instilling the importance of data and the application of the simple statistics. Next the Education, namely the application of the simple statistics, was done to overcome the problems that existed in Gapoktan, both in the organizational and business aspects. The Action was the simple application of statistics in the form of the direct jump in the data collection, the data recording, and the graphics analysis based on the data taken. Other than that, there were the games to measure the level of understanding and the implementation ability of the program “Eksis”.
“We hope that Gapoktan Saluyu is able to overcome the problem that occurs with the application of the statistics. The success of the program will later be the recruitment of the volunteer from the students or the Gapoktan management to be able to foster other Gapoktan, so that more and more Gapoktan that receive this program will become the systematic Gapoktan. Next, it can be made the information system that holds all the accurate data in Gapoktan. The information system can be used for the purposes of the researchers, the government, and Gapoktan itself,” she said. (IR/Zul)
