Universitas Brawijaya (UB) held a Local Food Consumption Movement activity to introduce alternative food to rice, namely sweet potatoes, Saturday (10/26/2024) in the corridor of the 1st floor of the Rectorate Building.
The Head of the Implementation Committee, Abdul Ghofar, SE., M.si., DBA., Ak. explained that the activity was one of the agendas of the series of events for the 62nd UB Anniversary which was filled with the provision of chili and sweet potato seeds and workshops.
“Later, we will collaborate with the agriculture and food service and also Bank Indonesia (BI) to provide chili and sweet potato seeds to the urban farming community. For the sweet potatoes, we call them the Brawijaya Variety. We are distributing these two plant seeds since planting chili and sweet potatoes can be an alternative when inflation occurs,” he said.
The seeds distributed to the urban farming community are the type of Sweet Potato in sacks developed by the Faculty of Agricultural Technology (FTP) and partners.
“The Faculty of Agricultural Technology (FTP) together with partners created an innovation called Ubi dalam Karung or sweet potato in the sack uses a planting method in the ground or small plots of land,” he said.
The Dean of FEB said that this planting pattern is very suitable to be applied in Malang City, which no longer has a large enough area for agriculture.
In addition to the symbolic giving of seeds, the activity was also filled with the provision of materials, such as community literacy about the importance of planting in urban farming to reduce inflation, planting and harvesting techniques, and how to process it into food.
One of the speakers, Dr.rer.pol. Wildan Syafitri, S.E., M.E said that chili is an important commodity but is prone to inflation caused by demand and supply factors.
“Chili inflation means the increase and decrease in the price of chili. So chili is very low when it is harvested. But when it is rare, the price is very high. However, if the price is low, farmers will suffer losses,” said the Head of the Postgraduate Study Program in Economics. Therefore, he said that to anticipate price inflation, chilies can be processed into chili powder or pecel sauce which lasts longer and can be used at any time. (UB PR/ Trans. Iir)
